Реферат: Campaign Finance Essay Research Paper No matter

citizens want a larger, more powerful government. A very tiny part of our

population is giving money to campaigns telling candidates what they have to do

to continue getting campaign contributions, yet these people do not represent

the ideology and sentiment of the people as a whole. There must be a change in

the way that campaigns are financed if democracy is to survive. If we do not

reform campaign finance we will have politicians working only for those who can

afford to contribute. Money is the major factor in any political race. It can

sway a decision very strongly depending on how well it is used. In the House,

the candidate who spends the most money on his or her campaign wins 92% of the

time. Things are no different in the Senate, here 88% of the time the bigger

spender wins. Incumbents are usually the tip money spender, because they raise

more money. Paul Starr, writer for The American Prospect , estimates that it

would take $1,000,000 for a challenger to defeat the incumbent. The only way a

challenger could get this kind of money would be to appeal to big business and

the wealthy, who have radically different ideas about government than the

general public. A challenger, to even have a chance, would have to turn to

business and wealth to win. With this great difficulty to de-seat an incumbent,

turnover in congress drops, and members become stagnant, winning on name alone.

All the while, they are giving breaks to the corporations and wealthy people who

got them there. With campaigns finance reform, we could get challengers and

incumbents on a level playing field so that the candidate with the better ideas

who will honestly help the majority will end up the victor. It would not matter

much where candidates got the money from for their campaigns except that when

elected, politicians act on in accordance to the wishes of those who have made

donations. 71% of citizens say that a politicians choices and votes are made on

the basis of money. 61% of donors agree with this. Its been explained that a

small percentage of people make donations, and these people do not represent the

population as a whole. If politicians make decisions based on this small group

of people they are not representing the entire population ,or doing what is best