Litigation

Outlook Bleak for Campaign Finance, Election Reforms?

By Peter Hardin

Disclosure of funding for “issue ads” in political campaigns has declined. And the next Congress isn’t likely to take steps toward campaign finance reform and election reform.

Those dual reports, culled from recent newspaper and online dispatches, outline the scope of the challenge facing advocates who support greater disclosure and campaign finance reform. Here are the sources:

• A Washington Post article reported that in the 2004 elections, 71 percent of forms that were filed to comply with federal disclosure requirements listed sources of money for issue ads. These ads typically typically are intended to elect an individual candidate, without directly asking voters to do so. This year, 15 percent of the forms reported a source. A change in federal regulations following a Supreme Court ruling contributed to this decline.
• Election law scholar Richard Hasen wrote an essay in Slate that was headlined, “Toppled Castle: The real loser in Tea Party wins is election reform.” Here is Hasen’s conclusion:

“The bottom line is that it when it comes to election reform, it doesn’t really matter whether the Democrats keep the House in November. Without moderates like Castle and Grayson, they will not have the votes to overcome a Senate filibuster and get cracking.

“This is one of those issues to which few people pay attention until the machines break and the chads hang, or a secretly funded ‘Swift boat’ attack launches, and then everyone wonders why we’re still in a mess. It is going to take hard work and bipartisanship to fix our elections. Both just got a whole lot tougher to come by.”

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 16, 2010 (boomark / email).