Politics

What Does an Election Cost?

By John Wonderlich

Sunlight feels strongly that Congress needs to respond to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, and require disclosure for newly allowed political spending from corporations and unions.

The scale of the new money that could now flow, unfollowed, into our politics can be hard to fathom.

That’s why I’ve made the following chart, to create a sense of scale.

BP’s profits in the first quarter of 2010 were about $6 Billion.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, The entire 2008 federal election, including “all dollars spent by presidential candidates, senate and house candidates, political parties and independent interest groups trying to influence federal elections”…

…cost about $5 Billion.

Update: To clarify, this was hand drawn by me (on the LayersPro Ipad app), to elucidate the fact that one quarter of profits of one company are greater than an entire American election, and its design should reflect only my limited finger doodling skills, and not those of Sunlight’s talented design team. :)

Full post as published by Sunlight Foundation on June 22, 2010 (boomark / email).