We Need More PACs to Fix Our Broken Electoral System

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We Need More PACs to Fix Our Broken Electoral System
Jennifer Victor

May 8

7-9 minutes

As the 2020 campaign season kicks into high gear, the chorus of voices decrying the influence of money in our electoral system is only expected to grow louder. According to the Pew Research Center, 77% of Americans think new limits should be placed on the amount of money groups and individuals can spend on campaigns. But in an era when more Americans are giving small donations to candidates, should we be worried about the expansion of money in politics?

It’s hard to say this early in the cycle whether 2020 will break previous campaign finance records. So far, federal candidates — that is, those running for the presidency and House and Senate seats — have already spent nearly $400 million. In the 2016 cycle, federal candidates spent a whopping $2.1 billion; in the 2018 midterms, they spent $1.8 billion. These are, of course, huge sums. But focusing on the totals belies the real problem with our political system: It’s not that there’s too much money. It’s that only a tiny fraction of Americans are able to supply the funding.

Of all the money donated to candidates, political action committees (PACs), and outside groups in a typical election cycle, about two-thirds are donations of $200 or more. In other words, most of the money funding candidates comes from people who can afford to give away at least $200. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, less than 1% of American adults give $200 or more to any federal candidates in any election cycle. When very few people dominate a supposedly democratic system and most Americans are unable to match their efforts, the balance in the system is thrown off.

When addressing our electoral imbalance, many analysts and journalists will focus on PACs, perhaps because we have solid data on them or because they rank among the oldest campaign funding mechanisms. But those concerns are misplaced: It’s not PACs themselves that are problematic — it’s the fact that only a small number of wealthy PACs (and individuals) are financing elections.

Broadly speaking, a PAC is associated with a corporation, labor union, or advocacy organization. The largest PACs give money to many candidates, but their contributions are limited by federal law — they can give up to $5,000 per candidate per campaign. PACs come in two types: connected and nonconnected. A connected PAC has a parent organization (like a corporation) that can tap its revenue stream — a big advantage in the fundraising world. A nonconnected PAC does not have a parent organization that helps to keep it afloat and must raise money to help cover its costs. There are thousands of PACs; most are very small organizations that don’t have many resources to distribute.

    What if there was a way to level the playing field without restricting the liberties that go along with the opportunity to reach candidates through this route?

Though PACs were invented as a means for unions and corporations to skirt campaign finance restrictions, they have since become a legitimate mechanism for campaign funding. The first PAC was formed in 1944 by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a major labor union, as a way to circumvent the federal government’s prohibition of union donations to federal candidates. By establishing a separate fund to which union members could contribute and using that fund to make campaign contributions, unions stayed within the boundaries of the law but were still able to support their preferred candidates. In the 1960s, the government deemed PACs legal as long as the funds remained separate from the coffers of the parent organization and the contributions were truly voluntary. With this legalized blessing, corporations began to establish their own PACs. It wasn’t long before the number of corporate PACs outnumbered their union counterparts.

The effects of PACs are most apparent in House races.The typical House candidate will receive 25% to 35% of their total receipts in PAC funds. The share is quite a bit smaller for Senate candidates (about 10%), who rely more on individual donations, and it’s almost negligible for presidential candidates (less than 0.1 of 1%). If that last figure seems odd given all the candidates’ boasts of refusing corporate PAC money, well, that’s politics: There really isn’t much corporate PAC money in presidential races; the Democratic presidential hopefuls are making no huge sacrifice.

So, are the corporations, unions, and advocacy groups using PAC donations corrupting the system? The ability to give congressional candidates PAC contributions may provide groups connections, relationships, and access to lawmakers they would not have otherwise. This doesn’t make the PACs inherently problematic; it’s the fact that this access is mostly limited to the wealthy that’s the issue.

What if there was a way to level the playing field without restricting the liberties that go along with the opportunity to reach candidates through this route?

Here’s a bold idea: We actually pour more money into the campaign finance system and fund more PACs.

What if for every dollar a corporate PAC donated to a candidate, party, or campaign committee, it also gave a dollar to a general campaign fund or party-connected committee? PACs that are unconnected to corporations — those that are created in the interest of issues, not entities — could apply to access those funds.

Of course, there would be great controversy over who could legitimately access the general fund. However, if it were regulated to concentrate distribution to organized political groups that face structural disadvantages in the system — for example, PACs associated with environmental groups, like “Partnership for Conservation” and “Ocean Champions” — then more PACs would ultimately participate in the campaign finance system.

    Here’s a bold idea: We actually pour more money into the campaign finance system and fund more PACs.

I can’t take credit for this idea. It was James Madison who first thought to promote underrepresented groups as a way to challenge the power of their more privileged peers. In an ideal world where every person and group has equal opportunity to participate, their actions balance one another out and the result is productive democratic deliberation with broad representation. But we’ve never lived in an ideal world of equal participation — for some, the costs are just too high. Left unregulated, the Madisonian ideal is never reached, because the resource-poor cannot match the resource-rich. A pot of money that the “poor” groups could access that is funded by the “rich” groups could help address this imbalance.

Our current campaign finance legal structure is strongly deferential to civil liberties such as free speech and to protecting freedoms of individuals to participate in supporting their preferred candidate. The system may appear fair — all eligible citizens are technically free to participate, after all. But the reality is quite different: Not everyone has the resources to participate at the same level. A dollar-for-dollar format would allow us to maintain our deference for the individual power to donate, while also leveling the playing field for those who want to participate but lack the resources.

If the 2020 presidential candidates want to make a meaningful statement about campaign finance, instead of pledging off PAC money they would barely get in the first place, they might talk about real ways to equalize political participation.