If you live in a hotly-contested state like Iowa or Florida, you’ve probably noticed the recent flood of “issue ads,” which are officially designed to raise awareness about certain issues rather than to advocate the election of a specific candidate. Less than a year ago, it looked like these ads wouldn’t be airing at all by now, but in June of 2007 the US Supreme Court handed down a decision that allowed them to continue.
The case was Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. But first, some background.
In 2002, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (popularly known as the …read more

Campaign spending is obviously one of the most contentious aspects of the US political process, and we often hear of proposals to limit expenditures as a way of leveling the playing field or promoting more moderate campaigns. Although we are used to discussing campaign finance laws proposed in or passed by Congress, the Supreme Court, in its role as interpreter of the US Constitution, plays a major role in regulating campaign finance. One of the United States Supreme Court’s most important cases deals with exactly that. The case is Buckley v. Valeo (1976), and it remains essential to understanding campaign …read more

I don’t know how many jokes I’ve heard about how cheap you can buy a senator, but campaign funding really is a huge influence on what a politician will do. It can be pretty hard to tell where the money is coming from, and where it’s going, from the outside, though. Periodically, a politician will promise to reform campaign finance, but it really isn’t in their best interest to succeed.
Campaign finance in the U.S. has become a sort of black magic: funds are conjured up from private individuals or political action committees, although not a huge amount. Then there is …read more