This is the first in a four-part mini series focusing on different angles of federal campaign finance reform, an issue augmented by the rise of undisclosed spending for candidates.
While the U.S. Senate debates campaign finance reform, Harvard law professor Larry Lessig is approaching the issue with a familiar tool in the digital age — crowdfunding.
In the face of a Supreme Court decision in April that eliminated aggregate limits for individual campaign donors, Lawrence Lessig orchestrated the Mayday PAC , a super PAC funded entirely by citizen donations, rather than special interest groups.
Lessig’s Mayday PAC crowdfunding campaign met its $5 million goal last Friday.
In the contentious Citizens United ruling in 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court identified political spending as an action protected by First Amendment rights.
The decision opened up a loophole for political spending — if money is not directly given to a candidate or a political party, then there are no limits on how much money can be spent, even by corporations.
This signaled the rise of the super political action committee, known as a super PAC, which are groups formed to take advantage of the political spending loophole.
Lessig criticized super PACs in a video on the Mayday PAC website.
“Right now Congress doesn’t answer to us, it answers to the elite few,” he said in the video, echoing anncreasingly common, especially among North Carolin. “Whether you’re on the left or the right, this system works against all of us.”
According to Lessig’s website, the money raised in the crowdfunding campaign will be used to support reform-minded candidates in the 2016 elections. The candidates who will receive the funding have yet to be determined.
Many Democrats in the U.S. Senate, meanwhile, are sponsoring a bill that would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971.
The reform bill in committee is called the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act.
The act would require more transparency from organizations’ donations during an election cycle, according to a press release from the White House. It would also include transfer provisions to prevent donors from using shell organizations to hide their activities.
The provision against shell organizations especially targets what is known as dark money, undisclosed funds given to candidates during the election cycle that fits into loopholes in existing legislation.
U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., one of the sponsors of the bill, said in the press release,
“Americans deserve a campaign finance system that is transparent and just, and information on who is funding political advocacy should be readily available to the public."
According to GovTrack.us, a government transparency website that predicts the probability of a bill being enacted , the DISCLOSE Act only has a 16 percent chance of being passed.
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