The Donor Class: Campaign Finance, Democracy, and Participation
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California Campaign Finance and Ballot Measure Guide Contents
State Law Resource California Campaign Finance and Ballot Measure Guide Contents Overview 1 Key Concepts 2 Activities Your Organization Can Engage in That Won’t Trigger Disclosure 8 Contribution Limits and Source Restrictions 11 Registration and Reporting Requirements 15 Reminders About IRS Rules 15 Registration Thresholds 15 Types of Recipient Committees 15 Registration and Reporting Mechanics 18 Recordkeeping Rules 20 Use of Campaign Funds 20 Communications 21 After the Election 23 Common Mistakes 24 Enforcement and Penalties 24 Alliance for Justice is a national association of over 120 organizations, representing a broad array of groups committed to progressive values and the creation of an equitable, just, and free society. Since 1979, AFJ has been the leader in advocating for a fair and independent justice system, preserving access to the courts, and empowering others to stand up and fight for their causes. The two pillars of Alliance for Justice are our Justice Program, focusing on ensuring our nation’s courts protect our critical constitutional rights and legal protections, and our Bolder Advocacy Program, focusing on building advocacy capacity among nonprofits and the foundations that fund them. bolderadvocacy.org allianceforjustice.org Page 1 State Law Resources California Campaign Finance and Ballot Measure Guide This guide summarizes the laws and regulations governing campaign finance in California. In California, “campaign finance” includes both ballot measures and candidates at both the local and state level. This guide is not intended to provide legal advice or to serve as a substitute for legal advice. For free legal and technical advice on compliance with California campaign finance rules, contact the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). -
2021 Campaign Finance Guide
2021 Campaign Finance Guide Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office Elections Division P.O. Box 136 Jackson, MS 39205 601-576-2550 Elections Hotline: 800-829-6786 www.sos.ms.gov 1 | P a g e R e v . 01/ 2 0 21 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ABOUT THIS GUIDE ............................................................................................................................................ 4 THIS YEAR’S CAMPAIGN FINANCE REPORTING REQUIREMENTS....................................................... 5 2021 MUNICIPAL GENERAL ELECTION REPORTING SCHEDULE......................................................... 7 2021 SPECIAL ELECTIONS REPORTING SCHEDULE ................................................................................ 7 CAMPAIGN FINANCE REPORTING IN MISSISSIPPI ................................................................................... 8 I. CAMPAIGN FINANCE FOR CANDIDATES AND CANDIDATE’S COMMITTEES ............................... 8 Distribution of Campaign Materials ................................................................................................... 9 Where do I file? ..................................................................................................................................... 9 What information must be reported? ................................................................................................. 9 When are reports due? ....................................................................................................................... 10 What types of reports -
Party Polarization and Campaign Finance
July 2014 Party Polarization and Campaign Finance Thomas E. Mann and Anthony Corrado INTRODUCTION he intense debate these days about the shortcomings of American democ- racy and how best to deal with them often features assertions about parties, Tpolarization, and campaign finance that appear puzzling if not downright con- Thomas E. Mann tradictory. For example, some analysts argue that campaign finance reforms have is the W. Averell Harriman reduced the role of political parties in campaigns and thereby weakened the ability Chair and senior fellow in 1 Governance Studies at The of party leaders to commandeer their members on behalf of achievable policy goals. Brookings Institution. Between 1987 and 1999, he was Director This seems an odd argument to make in an era of historically high levels of party loy- of Governmental Studies at alty—on roll calls in Congress and voting in the electorate. Are parties too strong and Brookings. He is co-author, with Norman J. Ornstein, of It's Even unified or too weak and fragmented? Have they been marginalized in the financing of Worse Than It Looks: How the elections or is their role at least as strong as it has ever been? Does the party role in American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of campaign finance (weak or strong) materially shape our capacity to govern? Extremism. A second example involves the mix of small and large individual donors and its connection to polarization. The increasing involvement in presidential and congressional campaigns of large donors—especially through Super PACs and politically-active nonprofit organizations—has raised serious concerns about whether the super-wealthy are buying American democracy. -
Towards Public Financing of Elections and Political Parties in India: Lessons from Global Experiences
NOVEMBER 2017 Towards Public Financing of Elections and Political Parties in India: Lessons from Global Experiences NIRANJAN SAHOO Towards Public Financing of Elections and Political Parties in India: Lessons from Global Experiences NIRANJAN SAHOO ABOUT THE AUTHOR Niranjan Sahoo is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, with many years of expertise on issues of governance, democracy, campaign finance reforms, insurgency, and conflict studies. He serves as a member of the Carnegie Rising Democracies Network (RDN) in Washington, D.C. ISBN : 978-93-87407-13-8 © 2017 Observer Research Foundation. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from ORF. Towards Public Financing of Elections and Political Parties in India: Lessons from Global Experiences ABSTRACT Democracy costs a lot of money. To fight elections and run their routine activities, political parties in India seek donations from all possible sources including “illegal” and “interested” money. This has serious ramifications in preserving the integrity of Indian democracy. An increasing number of countries, meanwhile, have taken the path of public subsidies and direct funding of parties and political activities—aiming to reduce dependence on interested money, equalise political opportunity, and bring greater transparency and accountability to democratic processes. By better targeting state subsidies, countries like Germany and the UK, for example, have made strides in reducing the role of interested money in elections and bringing visible transparency in their electoral politics. While India cannot take a leaf out of these experiences, there is a lot to learn from them. -
The Truth About Voter Fraud 7 Clerical Or Typographical Errors 7 Bad “Matching” 8 Jumping to Conclusions 9 Voter Mistakes 11 VI
Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law ABOUT THE BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law is a non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on fundamental issues of democracy and justice. Our work ranges from voting rights to redistricting reform, from access to the courts to presidential power in the fight against terrorism. A sin- gular institution—part think tank, part public interest law firm, part advocacy group—the Brennan Center combines scholarship, legislative and legal advocacy, and communications to win meaningful, measurable change in the public sector. ABOUT THE BRENNAN CENTER’S VOTING RIGHTS AND ELECTIONS PROJECT The Voting Rights and Elections Project works to expand the franchise, to make it as simple as possible for every eligible American to vote, and to ensure that every vote cast is accurately recorded and counted. The Center’s staff provides top-flight legal and policy assistance on a broad range of election administration issues, including voter registration systems, voting technology, voter identification, statewide voter registration list maintenance, and provisional ballots. © 2007. This paper is covered by the Creative Commons “Attribution-No Derivs-NonCommercial” license (see http://creativecommons.org). It may be reproduced in its entirety as long as the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is credited, a link to the Center’s web page is provided, and no charge is imposed. The paper may not be reproduced in part or in altered form, or if a fee is charged, without the Center’s permission. -
Campaign Finance Regulations and the Return on Investment from Campaign Contributions
CAMPAIGN FINANCE REGULATIONS AND THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT FROM CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS Stephen Ansolabehere James M. Snyder, Jr. Michiko Ueda Department of Political Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology August, 2004 Abstract Being good liberal Democrats, we began this study with the belief that corporations use their campaign contributions to shape public policy and that donors substantially benefit from their campaign contributions. Stock markets should reflect the high returns that firms enjoy from their political strategies, and changes in campaign finance laws ought to alter the stock prices of firms that give heavily to politics. That, however, is not the assessment of investors – those who value firms and the environment in which they operate. We identified dates of key campaign finance regulatory decisions and measured changes in stock prices of firms affected by those decisions. These decisions immediately affected hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate giving, but they have no apparent effect on the markets valuation of the long-term profitability of firms. This conclusion suggests that the fundamental critique of campaign finance in America – that donations come with a quid pro quo and extract very high returns for donors – is almost surely wrong. Campaign Finance Regulations and the Return on Investment from Contributions The United States regulates campaign contributions from firms, individuals, and voluntary associations, such as labor unions, in order to prevent corruption of politicians by organized interests. Perhaps the clearest expression of this concern is found in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Buckley v. Valeo 424 US 1 (1976). Justice Brennan, writing for the majority, argues that “contribution ceilings were a necessary legislative concomitant to deal with the reality or appearance of corruption.” (424 U.S. -
Campaign Finance: Life As a Political Consultant David Keene
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Brooklyn Law School: BrooklynWorks Journal of Law and Policy Volume 6 Issue 1 INAUGURAL DAVID G. TRAGER PUBLIC Article 4 POLICY SYMPOSIUM: Campaign Finance Reform: Will Anything Work? 1997 Campaign Finance: Life as a Political Consultant David Keene Follow this and additional works at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/jlp Recommended Citation David Keene, Campaign Finance: Life as a Political Consultant, 6 J. L. & Pol'y (1997). Available at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/jlp/vol6/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at BrooklynWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Law and Policy by an authorized editor of BrooklynWorks. CAMPAIGN FINANCE: LIFE AS A POLITICAL CONSULTANT David Keene* Although being a political consultant is not nearly as exciting as Dick Morris' would have us believe, over the years it has proven very interesting. Therefore, when Joel Gora called and asked me to come here today, I agreed because we have both been involved in campaign reform policy discussions for many, many years. I do not wish to recount with you my perspectives "from the trenches," but instead, wish to discuss my personal biases. I was executive assistant to Senator Jim Buckley2 in the 1970s when we won an amendment allowing expedited review of the 1974 Campaign Finance Act and, subsequently, took the issue to the Supreme Court with the assistance of some of the people here. What I feel we accomplished at the Supreme Court was to force policymakers at that time, and even now, to realize that the First Amendment means something. -
Speaker Biographies
Speaker Biographies Courtney Anderson ’06 Courtney Anderson graduated with a JD from Harvard Law School in 2006 and an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center in 2012. She practiced real estate law at Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago for four years before beginning a two-year clinical fellowship at GULC in affordable housing and community development. She is currently a law professor at Georgia State University College of Law and teaches property, health law and poverty law courses and is affiliated faculty at the Georgia State University School of Public Health. Courtney Anderson is the owner of Vibe Ride, a boutique fitness studio located in the Midtown neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. Vibe Ride is a start-up company founded in 2014, and is a women and minority owned business that specializes in indoor cycling. Afia Asamoah ’05 Afia Asamoah is Senior Product Counsel at Verily Life Sciences, formerly Google Life Sciences. She leads the legal, compliance, and regulatory affairs teams responsible for advising all health-related products developed at Verily. She was the first lawyer hired by the Google[x] life sciences team and was the sole lawyer advising on FDA matters across Google. Previously, Afia was a regulatory attorney at Covington & Burling LLP, where she advised on a range of healthcare regulatory and compliance issues. From 2009-2011, Ms. Asamoah was also a Special Assistant in the Office of the Commissioner at the US Food and Drug Administration, where she received four awards, including the FDA Commissioner’s Special Citation. In addition to her Harvard Law education, Afia holds a Masters of Public Policy from the John F. -
Forming a Uniform Voter Identification System Through Established Law
Connecting The Dots: Forming a Uniform Voter Identification System Through Established Law Louis A. D’Amarino 8 U. MASS. L. REV. 404 ABSTRACT The 2002 Help America Vote Act requires election officials to request photo ID for first time voters who registered by mail. Some states took this a step further and required all voters to present photo ID in order to exercise the franchise. These laws have attracted a great deal of attention recently because of the belief that these laws disenfranchise voters. However, what is needed is a uniform system that allows voters access to the ballot and also protects the integrity of the ballot. This note argues that all Congress has to do is connect the dots in several federal election laws to fashion a cardless system that would allow poll workers to easily identify voters while limiting the possibility of disenfranchising voters. AUTHOR Candidate for Juris Doctor, University of Massachusetts School of Law—Dartmouth, 2014; B.A. Political Science, Sacred Heart University, 2006; M.A. Public Policy, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2007. The author would like to thank his family and friends who have sacrificed his companionship to allow him to pursue his dream; the UMass Law Review for their oversight and assistance in writing this Note; Suffolk County Legislator John M. Kennedy, Jr.; and a special thanks to his wife Kathryn who has made more sacrifices than a young bride should so that he could pursue his dream. 404 2013 Connecting The Dots 405 I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 406 II. FRAUD ................................................................................................ 410 A. -
Connecting the Candidates: Consultant Networks and the Diffusion of Campaign Strategy in American Congressional Elections
Connecting the Candidates: Consultant Networks and the Diffusion of Campaign Strategy in American Congressional Elections Brendan Nyhan Jacob M. Montgomery Dept. of Government Dept. of Political Science Dartmouth College Washington University in St. Louis [email protected] [email protected] June 9, 2014 ABSTRACT Modern American political campaigns are typically conceptualized as “candidate- centered” and treated as conditionally independent in quantitative analyses. In reality, however, these campaigns are linked by professional consulting firms, who are important agents of campaign strategy diffusion within the extended party networks of the contemporary era. To test our hypothesis that consultants disseminate campaign strategies among their clients, we analyze new data on U.S. House elections derived from Federal Election Commission records. Using spatial autoregressive models, we find that candidates who share consultants are more likely to use similar campaign strategies than we would otherwise expect conditional on numerous explanatory variables. These results, which largely withstand an extensive series of robustness and falsification tests, suggest that consultants play a key role in diffusing strategies among Congressional cam- paigns. Authors are listed in reverse alphabetic order. We thank Tessa Baizer, Jeremy Kreisberg, Callie Lambert, Boris Litvin, and Joy Wilke for exceptional research assistance; Michael Heaney for providing support for their work; the editor, the anonymous reviewers, Sean Cain, Rick Hall, Michael Heaney, Russell Funk, Hans Hassell, Justin Kirkland, Seth Masket, Jon Rogowski, and audiences at the Political Networks conference, the University of Michigan, Dartmouth College, and the MIT American Politics conference for helpful comments; and Adam Bonica, James N. Druckman, Martin J. Kifer, Michael Parkin, Gary Jacobson, and the Center for Responsive Politics for generously sharing their data. -
The Participation Interest
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works Faculty Scholarship 2012 The Participation Interest Spencer A. Overton George Washington University Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/faculty_publications Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation 100 Geo. L. J. 1259-1310 (2012) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Participation Interest SPENCER OVERTON* Lack of participation is a primary problem with money in politics. Relatively few people make political contributions—less than one-half of one percent of the population provides the bulk of the money that politicians collect from individual contributors. This Article introduces and details the state’s interest in expanding citizen participation in financing politics. Rather than focus solely on pushing an incomplete anticorruption framework to restrict special interest influence, reformers should also embrace a strategy of giving more people influence. Reformers should accept that money produces speech and that “spe- cial interests” in the form of grassroots organizations are a democratic good that can stimulate participation. Increased participation makes government more accountable and responsive, and citizens who give even small financial contributions are more likely to become vested and participate in nonfinancial ways. The Article also presents policies that allow federal, state, and local legislatures to advance the state’s interest in participation. Such policies include tax credits, donor matching funds, exemptions from disclosure for donors of $500 or less, and relaxed restrictions on political action committees (PACs) and parties funded by small donors. -
Combatting Misinformation in the 2020 Election Hearing Subcommittee on Elections Comm
VOTING RIGHTS AND ELECTION ADMINISTRATION: COMBATTING MISINFORMATION IN THE 2020 ELECTION HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION OCTOBER 6, 2020 Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration ( Available on the Internet: http://www.gpoinfo.gov/committee/house-administration U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 42–741 WASHINGTON : 2021 VerDate Sep 11 2014 02:14 May 06, 2021 Jkt 042741 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5011 Sfmt 5011 E:\HR\OC\A741.XXX A741 dlhill on DSK120RN23PROD with HEARING COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION ZOE LOFGREN, California, Chairperson JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois, Ranking Member SUSAN A. DAVIS, California MARK WALKER, North Carolina G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia MARCIA L. FUDGE, Ohio PETE AGUILAR, California (II) VerDate Sep 11 2014 02:14 May 06, 2021 Jkt 042741 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 E:\HR\OC\A741.XXX A741 dlhill on DSK120RN23PROD with HEARING C O N T E N T S OCTOBER 6, 2020 Page Voting Rights and Election Administration: Combatting Misinformation in the 2020 Election ................................................................................................. 00 OPENING STATEMENTS Chairwoman Marcia L. Fudge ................................................................................ 00 Prepared statement of Chairperson Lofgren .................................................. 00 Prepared statement of Ranking Member Davis