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Since 1867, the American government has made efforts to ensure that there is no public fund that is used for campaigning. This has been faced by drawback until in the 1970s when the government ordered that all contesters disclose the sources of their campaigning money. This was followed by the enactment of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) to reinforce the decision. It aimed to limit the influence of elections by (rich individuals and corporate bodies) through limiting the donation to 1000 dollars for an individual and those by Political Action Committees (abbreviated as PACs) to 5000 dollars. This act was known as the hard currency bill since it was targeted on the hand cash (directly). As years went by, there was the use of soft cash as a means of influencing the elections; however, in the year 2002, a bill was enacted that raised the bar for individual and party donations and put measures that would limit the use of soft cash to influence the elections. The bill was called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002; some people also referred to it as McCain-Feingold, (Magleby and Quin, 2002).
Reform; a realistic expectation of the American political process
In politics there is always two sides of the same coin, the efforts that had been made by the government was a clear indication of the need to regulate the influence of money in elections; however, this has not attained much and elections are still moved by the candidates who have money. However, all is not lost because there are some regulations and bills that have been awaiting approval by the senate and when approved they can reverse this trend. One of the bills is the Voting with Dollars; this is a system that allows funding of the campaigns in two levels. One the patriots contribute to the form of buying vouchers to show their support. The value and the maximum number of vouchers that a supporter can buy are limited. The other private contribution will be made to a private account such that the candidate wont know who made it. This will assist after the election since the candidate will not favor any side as payback. Another way that elections can be straightened is the use of Clean Money, Clean Elections. This is a system where the candidate is expected to collect a certain number of signatures to denote backing from the people then get full funding of the campaign from the government. The candidate is not allowed to use his money whatsoever. He is not also allowed to accept private donations (Anon, 2010).
Soft Money and Their Effect
Soft money means unregulated money given to a campaigning party or a person. In most cases, it is given not because the giver supports the candidates but as mere funding of the campaign. Even some organizations have given it as their social corporate responsibility but in the end, it ends up influencing the election. The 2002 bill was seen as a remedy to soft money financing, in early 2010 in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling the Supreme Court seemed to support the issue when it ruled that soft money cannot be limited. The ruling has been seen to support the idea that a candidate can be supported without control (Anon, 2010).
Reference List
Anon. (2010). A Bad Day for Democracy: The Christian Science Monitor.
Magleby, D. and Quin M. (2002). The Last Hurrah? Soft Money and Issue Advocacy in the 2002 Congressional Elections. The Brookings Institution
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