Money vs. Democracy: The Rise of Exorbitant Digital Campaigning and its Implications for Elected Officials’ Accountability

Authors note:

This publication’s format doesn’t conform to the typical Overheard in the Capitol conventions because ideally, it’s going to be published in an academic journal with independent formatting standards sometime soon. Look for it in the Journal of Student Research where I published my initial research on First Amendment media controversies last year. While I prefer linking evidence directly in the text, that doesn’t align with the standards for publication in academic journals. You can still find full citations with links at the bottom of the article under the ‘works cited’ section.

Beyond formatting, this article remains “Overheard in the Capitol” in the most original sense. It builds upon the “First Amendment in the media era” work I’ve been carrying out for almost two years since my introduction to academic research at UCSB’s Summer Research Academy. Thus I hope all readers gain a heightened awareness of the media era’s less conspicuous implications for American society, particularly our electoral system, after reading this article. 

• Eli   

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Money vs. Democracy: The Rise of Exorbitant Digital Campaigning and its Implications for Elected Officials’ Accountability

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INTRODUCTION:

To quote the American pop icon Cyndi Lauper: “Money changes everything” (Koerth). Before unpacking the contentious discourse around digital media, campaign finance, and electoral politics—the crux of this research—we must first understand the validity of this statement regarding electoral outcomes. In short—does money win elections? The answer may seem cut and dry. After all, why the controversy if more money didn’t guarantee electoral victory?

The numbers oversimplify reality. For the 2022 congressional election cycle, the house candidate who ran a more expensive campaign won 93.38% of the time. For the Senate races, it was 82.35% (“Did Money Win?”). This data suggests that money does buy victory, but Richard Lau, a professor of political science at Rutgers, warns of conflating correlation with causation: “Money is certainly strongly associated with political success. But, I think where you have to change your thinking is that money causes winning. I think it’s more that winning attracts money” (Koerth). The candidate predisposed to winning—whether due to incumbency or greater name recognition—attracts more money because donors believe that contributing to their winning campaign will earn them special attention once the candidate takes office. However, campaign cash can’t outright purchase victory.

Nevertheless, political spending remains highly effective in certain situations, namely in primary elections for lesser-known candidates. For high-profile candidates, political spending quickly reaches a point of ‘diminished returns,’ a concept coined by Darrell West, a vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institute (Koerth). “A congressperson running in a close race, with no incumbent—or someone running for small-potatoes local offices that voters often just skip on the ballot—is probably getting a lot more bang for their buck,” Dr. West explains.

Still, voters associate fundraising success with political viability, leading candidates to willfully disregard this principle. For example, in 2013, the incumbent speaker of the house, Paul Ryan, spent $13 million to defeat an opponent who spent just $16,000 (“Paul Ryan”). Ryan could have won that election with zero dollars but still fundraised excessively because people perceive a campaign ‘war chest’ as indicative of political prowess. Politicians and voters alike believe convincing donors to hand over their money requires considerable amounts of strength, skill, and capability, which translate to higher legislative effectiveness in office. So while direct vote buying ceases to exist, perception still drives fundraising wars, ensuring campaign finance remains central to our electoral process.

The link between campaign spending and electoral success may be more correlative than causational, with the perception created by stockpiling campaign cash having greater influence than its monetary value. But when it comes to the discourse around campaign finance’s democratic implications, it’s irrelevant whether expenditures generate success, so long as candidates believe they do and continue their extravagant fundraising. Campaign finance reformers take issue with how funds are raised—who contributes and how much—not where the money goes. Frenetic and increasingly opaque fundraising drives the controversy, not expenditures. Having grasped the significance of campaign finance in elections, we'll now introduce the paper's structure and main topic of analysis.

Precise numbers aren’t needed to assert the fact that over the past century, both digital media’s presence and election costs have skyrocketed. In attempting to discern a definitive connection between these two phenomena, I researched the question, “How has the proliferation of digital media changed U.S. election spending and campaign finance, and what are the democratic implications of these changes?” This paper compares digital media and campaign finance trends across three distinct media eras—radio, television, and internet/social media—using data from the 1932, 1960, and 2012 election years to determine media and money’s relationship. In a successive section, I deconstruct the landmark Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) that shapes contemporary campaign finance dialogue and analyze its implications for American democracy.

To summarize my research findings: advertising is the principal expense for political campaigns. Digital media growth creates new avenues and opportunities for advertising, which increases the demand for campaign funds to be spent on advertising. When more money becomes necessary, candidates seek to connect with ultra-wealthy donors who can finance substantial portions of their campaigns in exchange for guaranteed responsiveness. This can cause a detrimental shift in the accountability of elected officials away from their constituents and toward their biggest campaign contributors. It’s also a direct violation of the democratic principle of one person, one vote since a singular wealthy voter’s support becomes paramount to that of an ordinary citizen.

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SECTION 1—The Relationship Between Digital Media Growth and Campaign Finance:

This section juxtaposes trends in digital media usage and political spending from the early 1930s to the modern era via the 1932, 1960, and 2012 election cycles. For each year, media is discussed first, followed by an analysis of its impacts on election spending. In summary, both have expanded at nearly congruent rates, begging the question of whether the trend is attributable to coincidence or causation. The evidence ultimately suggests a strong cause-and-effect relationship between the digital media’s evolution and the growing costs of elections.

1932:

The 1932 election between Democratic challenger Franklin D. Roosevelt and Republican President Herbert Hoover took place amidst what’s been dubbed the Golden Age of Radio (“The Development of Radio”). America's introduction to radio broadcasting came when the first licensed commercial broadcasting station based in Pennsylvania aired the 1920 presidential election results as its inaugural show (Gunderman). By 1937, 90% of households owned a radio set (Mayer). Despite its ubiquity, Dr. William G. Mayer of Northeastern University points out that at the time of the 1932 election, the radio hadn’t yet “established itself in the public mind as the nation’s principal source of news.” Referencing a Gallup study conducted in 1937, Mayer says that “when asked where they got most of their news, Americans tended to mention newspapers and radio in about equal proportions.”

It’s challenging to pin down data points for cumulative media usage and election spending from the pre-modern era since the Federal Election Commission—which regulates and ensures the fairness of national elections but also serves as an official centralized data hub—wasn’t created until 1975. However, statistics compiled by the University of California at Santa Barbara’s “The American Presidency Project” puts the total spending number for the 1932 presidential election alone (not including congressional, state, or local races) at $5.1 million (Woolley and Peters). Adjusting this figure for inflation using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator comes out to approximately $101 million, a far cry from today’s actual cost of presidential elections. The Great Depression undeniably carries some responsibility for the low price tag, but the lack of centralized mediums through which campaigns could advertise played a similarly crucial role.

The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College’s exhibit in partnership with the New York Historical Society “See How They Ran!” details the nature of 1932 campaign expenditures: “What may seem like primitive efforts now–posters, souvenirs, buttons, banners, cartoons, slogans, and songs–were the chief means of promotion” (“1932: FDR’s First”). The article continues that many Americans would “come to know Roosevelt” predominantly “via the radio,” noting that FDR’s “skillful use of the radio became a signature of his presidency.” It was also through the radio that Roosevelt popularized what’s probably the most famous presidential campaign song in American history, “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

Despite FDR’s dynamic advertising, his campaign expenses remained limited. According to late historical scholar Dr. Ernest Francis Brown, this resulted from Roosevelt’s adherence to the idea that “economy shall prevail,” as in the law of supply and demand (Brown). The relative lack of campaigning mediums in 1932 permitted fewer spending opportunities and fundraising demands, mitigating overall costs and campaign finance’s relevance to the electoral process. Frenetic fundraising wars had no place in an era with minimal mediums on which to unload campaign cash, leaving primary financing responsibilities to reputable and regulated national party committees. These factors moderated campaign costs for the first half of the 20th century, but in 1960, things changed. 

1960:

Between 1949 and 1959, the number of Americans who owned television sets jumped from six to 90 percent (Mayer). Additionally, advertising thrived in the new television format, earning the 1960s media era the title "Golden Age of Advertising." As expected, political advertisements were at the forefront of innovation. The first-ever televised debate between presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon was held on September 26, 1960. According to the Library of Congress, an estimated total of 60 to 70 million viewers watched the first and the successive debates, which came to be known as “the Great Debates” (“Today in History”). The popularity of these debates highlighted the growing importance of television in shaping public opinion and influencing voter behavior, which candidates recognized, leading to increased spending on TV campaigning.

Television did unlock an expansive landscape for cutting-edge advertising, but television advertisements’ higher costs necessitated additional cash, which readily infiltrated the political apparatus. The aforementioned “American Presidency Project” says that the 1960 presidential race alone cost $19.9 million, or $177 million today (Woolley and Peters). Other sources estimate spending for the entire 1960 election cycle at $28.3 million—now $268 million (“Candidates, Committees Report”).

This influx led the 1960 election cycle to become the first in which campaign finance and spending came under concentrated political scrutiny. CBS journalist John Dickerson writes that “In the early days of the 1960 campaign, then-presidential hopeful Senator John F. Kennedy was under attack from his opponent Senator Hubert Humphrey for spending too much money in his effort to secure the Democratic nomination. Humphrey called Kennedy's campaign ‘the most highly financed, the most plush, the most extravagant in the history of politics in the U.S.’”(Dickerson and Dufresne). He further notes that Kennedy’s main expenditures involved radio, mailers, and most crucially, television.

Uncoincidentally, the first election cycle featuring television as the principal means of advertising became the most financially bloated to date. Returning to Dr. Brown’s application of supply and demand, the advent of television—which ‘supplies’ advertising opportunities—exploded the demand for political advertising. It opened up an entirely novel, and therefore expensive, medium for campaigns to funnel cash into, necessitating loftier war chests to draw from. However, the $9.7 million that Humphrey decried the Kennedy campaign for spending translates to just $88.4 million in modern money (Woolley and Peters). For context, the 2012 presidential candidates raised just over $1 billion each for their respective campaigns (Dickerson and Dufresne). We’ll now examine how and why that nearly incomprehensible jump in spending came about in just over half a century.

2012:

In the modern media era, according to a Pew Research study, a large majority of U.S. adults (86%) say they often or sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer, or tablet, all nonexistent commodities during the 1932 and 1960 election cycles (Liedke and Wang). For comparison, 40% said they often use television, 16% for radio, and a meager 10% still actively consume print media. When asked which of these platforms Americans prefer to get news on, nearly six in ten (58%) prefer a digital device, 27% prefer TV, and even fewer prefer radio (6%) or print (5%).

Personal devices have an unequivocal monopoly over information consumption in the modern media era, but what types of apps and websites specifically do people use on their devices? According to the same study, 53% of Americans say they often or sometimes use social media to get their info, which is significant, but still less than the most popular option: news websites and apps (69%). The data speaks volumes; the balance has shifted away from traditional media—print, radio, and to a degree, television—with most Americans now favoring individualized digital media platforms as their means of absorbing information. Furthermore, media has become increasingly fragmented due to the variety of digital platforms consumers can choose to get their information from.

This explosion in digital media usage combined with the decentralization of information hubs rendered an astonishing final price tag of around $8.4 billion for the 2012 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission records (“FEC Summarizes”). Remember, even adjusted for inflation the total cost of election in 1960 was only $268 million, so what caused this gargantuan disparity?

The numbers regarding how campaign cash was allocated in 2012 again validate the theory that a greater supply of advertising mediums increases the demand for political spending. “Overall, advertising ends up being the major expense for campaigns,” said Travis Ridout, professor of government and public policy at Washington State University (Koerth). “In 2012, the average Senate campaign spent 43 percent of its budget on ads, and the average House campaign spent 33 percent. Presidential races spend an even bigger chunk of their budgets on advertising. In 2012, for instance, ads made up more than 70 percent of President Obama’s campaign expenses and 55 percent of Mitt Romney’s.” The divide between the 1960 and 2012 election years stems from a simple driving force: platforms for campaigning exploded with the introduction of social media, and news apps/websites, and the money followed the opportunities. Campaign advertising managers understand that not only do massive amounts of citizens use these platforms to consume news and information, but even greater numbers do so purely for entertainment-related purposes. These leisure users hardly existed during the newspaper/radio-only times and remain perfect targets for advertising, augmenting opportunity and thus the money spent on political advertisements.

Contrary to Roosevelt’s proclamation against overspending, today’s bountiful advertising opportunities have driven demand for funding to a point of artificial inflation, creating what Professor of Public Policy at UChicago Alexander Fouirnaies calls an “arms race of unnecessary campaign spending.” Dr. Fouirnaies also highlights one anti-democratic consequence of today’s exorbitant campaigning: “As it becomes normal for campaigns to spend higher and higher amounts, fewer people run and more of those who do are independently wealthy. In other words, the arms race of unnecessary campaign spending could help to enshrine power among the well-known and privileged” (Koerth). 

Dr. Fouirnaies calls this monetary barrier for entry as a candidate “the biggest effect of money in politics.” A monetary barrier for candidacy undoubtedly contradicts American democratic principles of freedom and equal opportunity, but because fewer citizens have a desire to hold office than to vote, this issue’s impacts have a limited scope. I agree that extravagant campaigning enshrines power among the well-known and privileged, but not through dictating who can run a successful campaign. Instead, this phenomenon allows the ultra-wealthy to act as puppeteers for elected officials whose campaigns they choose to finance in grandiose proportions. In some cases, they do so nearly independently, and in many, secretly, thanks to a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that turned the campaign finance landscape on its head, the focus of section two.

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SECTION 2—The Insidious Effects of Big Money in Politics

While some rather ungracious political ads have sparked controversy over the past decade, opponents of the campaign finance status quo and the Citizens United v. FEC ruling rarely take issue with campaign expenditures. As mentioned previously, how and where campaigns receive their funding bears the majority of criticism. Fundraising arms races make candidates desperate for campaign cash, allowing ultra-wealthy groups and individuals to “buy them out” in exchange for loyalty to their particular interests once in office.

Historical contextualization of campaign finance rules/regulations: 

According to the FEC’s mission statement, as early as 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt recognized the need for campaign finance reform and called for legislation to ban corporate contributions for political purposes (“Mission and History”). However, until the passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1974 and the FEC’s subsequent creation in 1975, regulations were limited, largely left up to individual states, and difficult to enforce without a centralized administrative agency. Thus campaigns during the 1932 election cycle were primarily financed by wealthy individuals, corporations, official political party organizations, and to a lesser extent, labor unions, giving way to considerable levels of big money influence and corruption.

By 1960, wealthy individuals and corporations remained major contributors to political campaigns. Despite decries of corruption, there were still no limits on individual or corporate contributions to federal campaigns, allowing affluent donors and businesses to influence the electoral process. However, as was the case in 1932, political parties continued to play the single-largest role. Local organizations gave to state groups, and state organizations funneled contributions up to the national committees (“Mission and History”).

The 1960 campaign finance process also involved Political Action Committees or “PACs,” which are organizations that allow individuals and businesses with shared interests to pool their funds in support of a specific candidate (Ghosh). PAC fundraising differs from that of political parties because PACs' interests and efforts are often more targeted and better coordinated. PACs may appear to facilitate special interest influence on politicians, but stringent disclosure rules and limitations on individual contributions to PACS and by PACs to campaigns mean they’re often characterized as having increased campaign finance transparency. Today, PACs are limited to accepting $5,000 per year from any individual or group, with corporations and unions being barred from contributing altogether. PACs can also only contribute up to $5,000 per election to a single candidate, or $15,000 to a political party organization (Ghosh).

By 2012, the campaign finance landscape looked significantly different. Political parties and PACs remained the dominant force, with FEC data reporting they cumulatively contributed about $3.9 billion of the total $8.4 billion for the 2012 election cycle (“FEC Summarizes”). An additional $3.3 billion came from direct donations to candidates' campaigns. The remaining $1.26 billion was sourced from what the FEC officially calls “independent expenditure-only committees,” which manifest themselves in two distinct forms: Super PACs and “dark money” groups. Both organizations can accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, labor unions, and other PACs, so long as they don’t contribute directly to candidate or party organizations, or coordinate with them, hence the “independent expenditure-only” in their names (Ghosh). Super PACs and dark money groups often develop advertising campaigns similar to those of candidate campaigns or party committees but are prohibited from collaborating with them regarding the ad’s content, production, or distribution.

The distinguishing factor between Super PACs and dark money groups is that Super PACs must disclose their funders to the FEC. Any group with the primary purpose of spending on elections is theoretically supposed to register as a PAC or Super PAC and disclose the identities of its donors, but the purported purpose of dark money groups is not to spend on elections (Ghosh). A Vox article entitled “The Citizens United era of money in politics” explains that “nonprofits that advocate on policy issues—for instance, environmental groups or gun rights groups—are allowed to spend some of their money on campaign ads. They can do so by registering as ‘social welfare’ groups under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, and they do not have to publicly disclose their donors” (Prokop).

The result: as cited in a recent study on the impacts of the Citizens United decision by American researchers and economists Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane, “Over $1 billion was spent on independent political expenditures in the 2012 election cycle, more than the total of the previous 20 years combined” (Hubbard and Kane). This influx of uncapped campaign cash is taking a toll on American democracy. Super PACs and dark money groups facilitate the money monsoon and are the direct result of the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC landmark Supreme Court case, whose fallacies and adverse implications for American democracy will now be uncovered.

The Ruling and Implications of Citizens United:

The Citizens United v. FEC case was filed by the D.C.-based nonprofit group Citizens United when the FEC blocked the airing and distribution of the political documentary they created opposing Hillary Clinton entitled “Hillary: The Movie.” Ultimately, the Supreme Court held five to four that “the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, and other associations,” overturning decades of settled electoral law (Prokop). The ruling also reaffirmed the principle of money being a form of protected political speech created by Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and the 1978 ruling in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti that corporations do have free speech rights (Casleton). As Citizens United’s novel addition to judicial precedent, Chief Justice Kennedy explicitly enshrined protection of—keyword—independent expenditures, arguing that they “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” (Casleton). To validate his reasoning, Kennedy also shrunk the definition of corruption to only include explicit bribery or “quid-pro-quo” corruption. Therefore, contrary to the belief of many Citizens United critics, the decision can be validated by precedent; however, as most recently demonstrated by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade (1973) in 2022, precedent is subject to reversal. Additionally, the precedent itself is fundamentally flawed on numerous grounds and therefore should not be considered valid corroboration for the Citizens ruling.

On the issue of corporate personhood—the idea that corporations should have the same First Amendment rights as individuals—NYU School of Law Professor and acclaimed First Amendment Scholar Burt Neuborne argues that “corporations lack dignity and a conscience,” which he believes “underpin the human right to free speech” (Casleton). Furthermore, corporations are legal entities composed of numerous individuals, each with their own distinct political opinions. Corporate personhood asserts that because corporations are made up of people, each with individual free speech rights, the corporation as a whole also enjoys these rights. However, corporate personhood’s logic is flawed because it’s impossible for a corporation to accurately ‘speak’ on behalf of all of its shareholders without neglecting the minority since every shareholder does not share the same views or ideology. Minority shareholders have their free speech muzzled by their corporation’s supposedly ‘all-encompassing’ free speech under the Citizens United justification for corporate personhood. Corporations also operate under the profit incentive rather than morality, expression, empathy, or other humanistic principles as do individual citizens, further weakening the argument in favor of enshrining their human-esque free speech rights.

Furthermore, originalist constitutional scholars assert that the founders would have balked at the idea that money and speech are one and the same. Their reasoning is clear-cut: the First Amendment was designed to protect individual freedom, but also equality, in that each citizen’s voice carried equal weight under the law. In physical speech, all voices are created equal. Money, on the other hand, is not. The quintessential idea behind money’s value is that not everybody has an equal amount. Therefore, qualifying money as a form of speech under a constitutional clause intended to promote equality is entirely paradoxical and misguided. As put by Andrew Prokop, a senior politics correspondent at Vox, “In an electoral context, unlimited speech (ad spending) from some people,” referring to those with deep pockets, “could drown out the speech of others, and effectively trample on their own First Amendment rights.” Simply put, Citizens United’s logic sacrifices the free speech rights of less wealthy individuals to amplify the voices of the uber-rich.

Uncapped contributions to Super PACs—a phenomenon created by Citizens United—are a leading cause of wealthy voice inflation, and both parties indulge in Super PAC-facilitated funding. In 2012, 57% of individual contributions to democratic candidates’ campaigns were less than $2,000 (“The 2012 Money Race”). This is because contribution limits prohibit and discourage massive individual contributions, promoting equal participation in the campaign finance process. One voter couldn’t skew a candidate’s accountability regardless of their wealth because their influence is capped by the amount they can donate. However, 49% of contributions to democratic Super PACs were upwards of $1 million (“The 2012 Money Race”). The lack of contribution limits for Super PACs bestows a ‘special voice’ to those able to contribute lavishly. Bluntly put, the Citizens United ruling created an electoral system where a citizen’s wealth is inextricably tied to the influence of their vote, which as Professor, Author, and Public Speaker Dr. Riki Ott says, has “legalized the wholesale purchase of America’s elected officials” (Ott). It has also shifted politicians' accountability from the majority of their constituents to their biggest donors. How else would arbitrary exemptions and loopholes for certain businesses and industries always seem to ‘sneak’ their way into the tax code?

Dark money groups are particularly insidious due to their lack of disclosure requirements. In some cases, certain individuals will register a 501(c) organization solely to contribute exorbitant sums of personal money to anonymously bolster or oppose a candidate. For example, the libertarian conservative political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity was established to serve as a medium for the Koch brothers to flood elections with their fortunes to promote conservative candidates willing to accept their influence, or as they’d put it, work together towards ‘common goals’(Prokop). Other truly anonymous groups with unclear funding sources often serve a similar purpose for more discreet ultra-wealthy people, although, without disclosure requirements, the truth behind such speculation remains unclear.

Despite its overwhelming erroneousness, there is one cogent argument in favor of the Citizens United ruling, but it only works for presidential elections. In their joint study championing Citizens United’s impact on American democracy, the aforementioned Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane make the following assertion:

What Citizens United really did was create a level playing field between the two big factions (the Democratic and Republican parties) and all the smaller factions in U.S. politics—every other player that wants to participate in electioneering speech. What is new now is that smaller donors can participate outside of the duopoly by contributing to party-like organizations with their independent expenditures. (Hubbard and Kane)

When looking at the numbers, Hubbard and Kane’s idea of independent expenditures merely “leveling the playing field” checks out. In the 2012 election cycle, just over $1 billion was spent on independent political expenditures (Hubbard and Kane). During the same cycle, the Democratic National Committee spent $1.067 billion and the Republican National Committee spent $1.009 billion. Independent expenditures amounted to just 50 percent of what the “duopoly” spent, rendering them a minority player in the campaign finance sphere. 

Furthermore, the sheer grandiosity of presidential elections regarding both spending and constituency size renders it impossible for any individual or organization to “buy out” a presidential candidate; there are simply too many mouths to feed. Presidential candidates represent an expansive variety of interests and constituents, seeking to draw backing from as many as possible. No presidential candidate has or could ever win by campaigning on a single issue (theoretically on behalf of an individual donor). It’s not feasible. Therefore, presidential candidates’ diversity of interests insulates their accountability from being skewed by a conspicuous mega-donor, rendering the accountability argument void—the primary focus of Citizens opponents—in the presidential context.

Beyond presidential elections, Hubbard and Kane’s theory crumbles. Specifically, candidates for local or even state-level offices remain highly susceptible to manipulation by single-interest big donors. Take SuAnn Olson, a member of the North Dakota House of Representatives. She won North Dakota District 8 in 2022 with a grand total of just $10,883 in fundraising (“SuAnn Olson”). Further concerning, Olson’s expenditures totaled zero dollars; she accepted $10,883 but spent nothing. This leaves us only to speculate regarding the purpose of said contributions.

Contrary to presidential races, the sheer lack of scale in certain state and local elections raises immense cause for concern. Olson’s 2022 campaign contributors couldn’t be traced on the FEC’s website, but when an entire campaign costs just $10,883, one special interest group or wealthy individual could buy out that candidate with ease. Couple Olson’s campaign’s scale with the limited and likely homogenous constituency in rural North Dakota to which she must appeal and you have a perfect storm for monopolizing Olson’s accountability. Thus, at the local and state levels, elected officials assuredly remain “open for business” when it comes to donors purchasing their accountability via supplying campaign cash (Zakaria).

This situation becomes further precarious when considering that the sole purpose of offices with smaller constituencies is to provide direct responsiveness to voters. America’s founders understood that the president represented too broad a constituency for them to be sufficiently responsive. After all, they quite literally represent the entire country. To ensure government responsiveness to citizens the founders deliberately created the legislature where officeholders represent a significantly smaller constituency and therefore can better serve particular individual’s more targeted needs (Simon et al.) The federal system amplifies responsiveness by permitting each state to have its own legislature in which members represent compacted districts with even fewer citizens. The dilemma is entirely paradoxical. Smaller offices exist explicitly to provide voters with greater responsiveness and accountability from their elected officials, yet wealthy groups and people most easily commandeer them.

The president was never expected to be highly responsive to his constituency because he serves the entire nation. Citizens United campaign finance rules have had a neutral impact on presidential accountability where accountability was never a focus to begin with, but have completely jeopardized accountability at the lower levels where it forms the basis of such office’s existence. Consequently, Citizens United has struck American democracy where it hurts the most.

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CONCLUSION:

Money plays an invaluable role in elections at every level. By analyzing media and election spending trends across the 1932, 1960, and 2012 election cycles, we confirmed that the advent of novel digital platforms directly increases campaign costs, for which advertising constitutes the majority of expenses. Resulting of growing demands for campaign funding, sources of contributions have evolved, beginning with party organizations and individual donors and culminating in today’s melting pot of PACs, super PACs, dark money groups, and the aforementioned institutions.

The monumental Citizens United v. FEC 2010 Supreme Court ruling largely circumvented existing contribution and distribution regulations on individuals and political organizations by creating “independent expenditure-only committees,” which can fundraise and spend unlimitedly on independently-produced advertisements. Dark money groups—a sub-group of independent expenditure-only committees—even permit anonymous political spending thanks to their special status granted by the federal tax code. Uncapped spending combined with the principle of money being speech allows wealthy individuals’ political speech to trump that of ordinary citizens, which, in the case of smaller-scale elections, can shift a candidate’s accountability from their constituents to their biggest donor, subverting the quintessential democratic idea of one person, one vote.

Despite many liberal politicians including campaign finance reform and overturning Citizens United as centerpieces of their policy agendas, absent a constitutional amendment or drastic change in the Supreme Court’s composition, Citizens will likely stand (Prokop). As such, progress must come from grass-roots efforts. Ph.D. student of political philosophy and intellectual history at UC Berkeley Scott Casleton says state or local legislation that promotes smaller contributions—$200 or less—could prove an effective bottom-up strategy to counter big money in politics (Casleton). He proposes that a recently enacted “democracy voucher” program in Seattle could serve as a national model:

Every eligible voter in Seattle receives $100 in vouchers, which they can freely donate to campaigns in the local city elections. This means every voter can participate in the pre-election process by using their money to “speak up” for candidates they endorse, and it enables lesser-known candidates to find financial support without bending the knee before big-money special interests. (Casleton)

Ultimately, it’s more programs like this that will involve more of the general population in the national dialogue surrounding campaign finance reform, which translates to heightened political pressures—particularly in Congress—with the potential to effectuate tangible change.

Despite money’s omnipotence, American democracy still fundamentally serves the American people. Grassroots efforts generate greater public participation in reform campaigns and are a crucial first step on the path toward more substantial federal change. It’s far from a guarantee, but if our democracy still operates as intended, coordinated, widespread, and collective action by the people should ultimately expel nefarious big-money interests from our electoral system.         

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