How Super PACs Have Transformed the Federal Campaign Finance System: A Political Scientists' Amicus Brief to the Supreme Court.
43 Pages Posted: 2 Sep 2020
Date Written: July 24, 2020
Abstract
This paper served as an amicus brief to the Supreme Court concerning Representative Ted Lieu et. al vs. Federal Election Commission, a petition for review of the 2010 D.C. Circuit Court decision that legalized Super PACs. The brief finds that Super PACs accepting unlimited contributions spend nearly one in every four federal election campaign dollars, concentrated on the most competitive races. They enable million-dollar donors to support organizations marketing and conducting themselves as extensions of candidates’ and parties’ campaigns — regardless of federal contribution limits applying to those campaigns. Thus Super PACs undermine the contribution limits that are the very basis of the federal campaign finance system.
Keywords: Campaign Finance; Super PACs; SpeechNow.org v. FEC
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