Campaign Finance Problems

The primary problem facing campaign finance today is the anonymousness of the political donors. Whether you ask a Republican, Democrat or Independent, their primary attitude toward the situation is a call for disclosure of identity for donors. In the modern age of the internet, this can be provided instantaneously to anyone wishing access. Some people, such as Representative John Doolittle, believe that as long the campaign donors' identities are disclosed, that contributions could become limitless. These people feel that, even with limits, donors will find ways of hiding their true contributions and have no effective limit anyway. Others believe that even in this scenario, contributions should be limited to prevent unfair advantage of established …show more content…
If these contributions are an act of free speech, how can Americans fell it right to put limitations on anyone's rights, whether the agree with the contributors or not. These can be easily considered free speech when the finances directly support advertisements or other political media that is either in support of, or against a candidate or political party. Since this is the case, these contributions should have no limits, as the American right to free speech has no limits. This proposal brings up problems if limits are still to be put in place on all other expenditures. Determining what is spent on speech and what is spent on logistics will be very difficult, but this is a problem that can be solved by meticulous and transparent book keeping. The problem occurs when a large contributor claims he can spend limitless finances on a campaign, claiming all of his money will go towards free speech items, and ask that the logistics are covered by the small donors. This does nothing to improve upon the environment already established that has created the “money shift” tendencies. This leaves the best practical solution for free speech issues to be having no limits on campaign