Voter Vouchers Can Help Clean Up Politics
From the Los Angeles mayor's race to the race for the presidency, the role of independent campaign finance spending -- money that isn't directly coordinated with candidates -- has never been more important. In the Hahn-Villaraigosa contest, independent spending is at a record of more than $2.3 million, which frees the candidates to exceed the $1.8-million spending cap each agreed to when he took partial public funding for his campaign. On the national level, the so-called 527 organizations (remember the Swift Boat Veterans and MoveOn.org?) are gathering six- and seven-figure donations, and those donations are taking the place of the "soft money" gifts to political parties that Congress outlawed in 2002.
So is this independent spending yet another campaign finance "loophole" that should be closed, or is it something to be celebrated as part of the vigorous free exchange that should take place in the election season? It's neither. Instead, it's an unavoidable consequence of our private system for financing elections, and it cannot and should not be limited until we shift to full and fair public financing.
To understand the rise of independent spending, it's necessary to look at the Supreme Court's 1976 decision in Buckley vs. Valeo. In that case, the Supreme Court upheld the ability of Congress to limit contributions to candidates. Giving a donation was the significant act of speech and association, according to the decision, and limiting merely the amount didn't take much away from that right. Moreover, large contributions given to candidates raise concerns about corruption, so limiting them would help prevent damage to the political process that could come from even the appearance of corruption.
When it came to independent spending, however, the court said that curbing contribution amounts would have too much of a detrimental effect on 1st Amendment rights. The federal law at issue in Buckley would have barred most individuals from spending as little as $1,000 on, say, a newspaper ad promoting a presidential candidate. Not only would that limit important voices in a political campaign, the court held, it could not be justified by a concern about corruption or the appearance of corruption, given the requirement that such efforts be independent from the candidates. So the court's decision let independent spending stand and paved the way for the situation today.
