-
FECA
In 1971, Congress consolidated its earlier reform efforts in the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), instituting more stringent disclosure requirements for federal candidates, political parties and political action committees (PACs). Still, without a central administrative authority, the campaign finance laws were difficult to enforce.
-Public funding of federal elections originally proposed by President Roosevelt in 1907 began to take shape in 1971 when Congress set up the income tax checkoff -
PAC
What is a PAC?
PAC is short for Political Action Committee. It gets campaign contributions together and donates them to a campaign for or against candidates, issues, etc. -
Soft-money
What is soft-money?
a contribution to a political party that is not accounted as going to a particular candidate, thus avoiding various legal limitations. -
FECA Limit
Buckley v. Valeo
The Court upheld contribution limits because they served the government's interest in safeguarding the integrity of elections. However, the Court overturned the expenditure limits, stating: "It is clear that a primary effect of these expenditure limitations is to restrict the quantity of campaign speech by individuals, groups and candidates. The restrictions. . . limit political expression at the core of our electoral process and of First Amendment freedoms." Acknowledging that -
527s
spending by 527s rose rapidly after 2002 and in 2004 election the committees spent about $612 million to "advocate positions" as they were not allowed to "expressly advocate" for voting for specific candidates. -
Citizens United
In its 2010 case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court overturned sections of the Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain-Feingold Act) that had prohibited corporate and union political independent expenditures in political campaigns.[5] Citizens United made it legal for corporations and unions to spend from their general treasuries to finance independent expenditures related to campaigns, but did not alter the prohibition on direct corpora -
Super PACs
"independent-expenditure only committees" by 2011 every major presidential candidate had one or more affiliated super PACs. Super PACs ran negative ads to damage a candidate's opponents, while candidate committees accentuated the positive about the candidate. (coming in from all angles) -
Stacking and Packing
When african americans were moved to prodominently african american states to mess with voting -
Cost to Run
The average cost to run for House Incumbent and Challenger would be $1.6 million and $1.7 million respectively. As for Senate Incumbent and Challenger, it would be $7.2 million and $10.7 million. However, the cost to run for president would be about 750 million dollars compared to the money raised and spent during Obama’s campaign. Basically the cost to run for House is very little compared to Senate, but is extremely small compared to running for President.