United States Political Party Reforms

Many American voters have noticed an increased amount of issue ads and countless campaign commercials that have claimed prominent television and radio airtime in recent elections. While most of these political candidate ads are of a "get out the vote" nature and are voter mobilization oriented, they not only get on the nerves of viewers, they also raise a few eyebrows on the Congressional front. Prior to 2002, hundreds of thousands of dollars could be spent on such ads as these, and a majority of this money came directly from soft money contributions to political candidates. We'll see just how these soft money contributions affect who wins in politics.

Soft money funds are a sort of gray area of campaign funding. Since they are independently donated, the motivations behind each campaign gift are uncertain. Millions of dollars have been donated to any one candidate's campaign in the past, with party totals overall even reaching past the hundred million mark in a late nineties campaign. Were the donors of these funds hoping the candidates would remember them in Congress when it came time for a particular bill to be passed? With this amount of money being doled out, it became hard to believe there were no incentives to donate in large sums.