Voters Use Campaign Finance Transparency and Compliance Information

Abstract

Campaign finance compliance and transparency reveal important non-policy attributes that voters care about. Using vignette and conjoint survey experiments, I show that voters in primary elections incorporate transparency and compliance considerations into candidate selection. This effect persists even where the candidate shares the respondents’ preferred policy positions. The findings bring campaign finance transparency and compliance into the scholarly conversation about candidate valence. They also have implications for our campaign finance jurisprudence and suggest that courts should expand their understanding of the informational benefits of campaign finance disclosures and compliance information.

Keywords: transparency, campaign finance, valence, elections, voting, compliance