@EzraKlein and statistics god Nate Silver (@FiveThirtyEight on Twitter) were tweeting about SuperPACs and how much impact they had on the last (2012) election cycle in the U.S.
I chimed in, but with five twitter handles on the thread, I soon ran out of space for deep comments, even given my past training in headline writing 8-) So I'm posting here with some more detail and I'll tweet a link to this.
Things that might not occur to an average American reader: many other countries have grappled with the challenge of implementing democracy in practice, and specifically with how to keep big piles of money from distorting the task of choosing representatives in line with public opinion. Wherever you go, there are powerful interests with lots of money who would like to have policies tailored to their own aims, which may not always align with the public interest. This can include very wealthy individuals, corporations, and other groupings including unions, professional associations, advocacy groups and even religious organizations (being non-profit does not always preclude being able to marshall large sums of money for ad campaigns.)
So a basic challenge in implementing fair voting for public office is to make each citizen's vote count while preventing anyone from using wads of cash to "buy" public office - even if we deter outright bribery, there's a feeling that one individual making huge campaign contributions could reap undue influence on the recipient, as well as that unequal election spending, including ad buys by third parties, could skew election results away from an unbiased sampling of public sentiment.
One course I especially enjoyed in my long-ago B.A. was "comparative politics." Here's one example of that approach applied to campaign finance limits (sorry, paywalled): Susan E. Scarrow, "Campaign Finance in Comparative Perspective"
I want to get this post done so I haven't digested the whole paper - just pointing out that this is something you can fruitfully compare across countries. Also that one has 77 footnotes so this is not a sparse area of study 8-)
Anyway, most democracies including the U.S. have had campaign finance laws that seek to address these concerns. Here in Canada, an individual may donate no more than $1200 to a political party or candidate. Third party ad spending in favor of a party or candidate is capped at ~$4000 per electoral district (per 3rd party - not sure how we limit sock-puppetry here?)
The U.S. has seen attempts to cap political spending, though with much less success. One group that's been pursuing this ever since I was a lad is Common Cause (@commoncause on Twitter). When "campaign finance reform" made some strides in the 70's, those wanting to spend more came up with any number of creative ways to comply with the letter of those laws while trampling on their spirit: PACs, astroturf groups, and more recently SuperPACs and Citizens United.
Canada's last federal election in 2011 cost just over $CAD 300 million in operating costs by Elections Canada; the three major parties were limited to $CAD 21 million each in campaign spending. By contrast, the total cost of choosing who gets to be "the most powerful man in the world" has now passed the seven billion dollar mark (and more for Congress). Less than half of the spending, around $3.2 billion, was spent by the candidates. (The cost of counting the vote is not easy to measure in the U.S. as it is decentralized among the 50 states.) The population of Canada is about 1/10th that of the US. In our respective latest federal elections, Americans spent 15 times as much per person choosing their national leadership in terms of candidate/party spending; the U.S. expended as much again through third-party ad buys that have no counterpart in Canadian politics.
But also the American public sometimes expresses campaign fatigue, and members of the House admit they take office and must start fundraising for their next run during the first week.
American election campaigns drag on over almost two years, counting the primary races. Canada's federal elections last six weeks. (We don't run primaries - each party gets to pick its leader through a party convention as need arises).
We thus spend much less time enduring TV attack ads (aside from those that pop up on Canadian TV sets tuned to US stations, both over the air and on cable or satellite.) One consolation: we did get to watch a lot of good send-ups of this spectacle on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
I chimed in, but with five twitter handles on the thread, I soon ran out of space for deep comments, even given my past training in headline writing 8-) So I'm posting here with some more detail and I'll tweet a link to this.
Things that might not occur to an average American reader: many other countries have grappled with the challenge of implementing democracy in practice, and specifically with how to keep big piles of money from distorting the task of choosing representatives in line with public opinion. Wherever you go, there are powerful interests with lots of money who would like to have policies tailored to their own aims, which may not always align with the public interest. This can include very wealthy individuals, corporations, and other groupings including unions, professional associations, advocacy groups and even religious organizations (being non-profit does not always preclude being able to marshall large sums of money for ad campaigns.)
So a basic challenge in implementing fair voting for public office is to make each citizen's vote count while preventing anyone from using wads of cash to "buy" public office - even if we deter outright bribery, there's a feeling that one individual making huge campaign contributions could reap undue influence on the recipient, as well as that unequal election spending, including ad buys by third parties, could skew election results away from an unbiased sampling of public sentiment.
One course I especially enjoyed in my long-ago B.A. was "comparative politics." Here's one example of that approach applied to campaign finance limits (sorry, paywalled): Susan E. Scarrow, "Campaign Finance in Comparative Perspective"
I want to get this post done so I haven't digested the whole paper - just pointing out that this is something you can fruitfully compare across countries. Also that one has 77 footnotes so this is not a sparse area of study 8-)
Anyway, most democracies including the U.S. have had campaign finance laws that seek to address these concerns. Here in Canada, an individual may donate no more than $1200 to a political party or candidate. Third party ad spending in favor of a party or candidate is capped at ~$4000 per electoral district (per 3rd party - not sure how we limit sock-puppetry here?)
The U.S. has seen attempts to cap political spending, though with much less success. One group that's been pursuing this ever since I was a lad is Common Cause (@commoncause on Twitter). When "campaign finance reform" made some strides in the 70's, those wanting to spend more came up with any number of creative ways to comply with the letter of those laws while trampling on their spirit: PACs, astroturf groups, and more recently SuperPACs and Citizens United.
Canada's last federal election in 2011 cost just over $CAD 300 million in operating costs by Elections Canada; the three major parties were limited to $CAD 21 million each in campaign spending. By contrast, the total cost of choosing who gets to be "the most powerful man in the world" has now passed the seven billion dollar mark (and more for Congress). Less than half of the spending, around $3.2 billion, was spent by the candidates. (The cost of counting the vote is not easy to measure in the U.S. as it is decentralized among the 50 states.) The population of Canada is about 1/10th that of the US. In our respective latest federal elections, Americans spent 15 times as much per person choosing their national leadership in terms of candidate/party spending; the U.S. expended as much again through third-party ad buys that have no counterpart in Canadian politics.
But also the American public sometimes expresses campaign fatigue, and members of the House admit they take office and must start fundraising for their next run during the first week.
American election campaigns drag on over almost two years, counting the primary races. Canada's federal elections last six weeks. (We don't run primaries - each party gets to pick its leader through a party convention as need arises).
We thus spend much less time enduring TV attack ads (aside from those that pop up on Canadian TV sets tuned to US stations, both over the air and on cable or satellite.) One consolation: we did get to watch a lot of good send-ups of this spectacle on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
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