Almost nine million Americans have registered to vote since the motor-voter law took effect in January 1995, according to a League of Women Voters study being published today. It is estimated that another six million will register at motor vehicle agencies by the end of the year.
Source: Bill Varner, "Motor-Voter law Signs Up Nine Million," USA Today, October 15, 1996.
The latest Clinton scandal, involving alleged illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic Party from the Riady family of Indonesia and Cuban drug lord Jorge Cabrera, has given new impetus to campaign finance reform.
The problem is that campaigns are expensive and this is not going to change anytime soon. But any meaningful reform must further restrict campaign contributions, and parties and candidates will have to replace those funds elsewhere. Unfortunately, there really are only two ways of doing this. One option would force radio and TV stations to air free advertising for candidates. This does not seem fair and probably would not work very well. It certainly will be resisted strenuously by broadcasters.
The only other way of paying for campaigns with fewer private contributions would be to provide public financing. But again, this would not seem to be a viable option. For one thing, we already have more than 20 years experience with public financing for presidential elections. Yet vast sums of taxpayer money do not seem to have done much to improve the quality of campaigns. Nor does there seem to be much in the way of support for public financing among those whose taxes pay for it currently.
The Federal Election Commission reports that during the 1995-96 campaign cycle $260 million of taxpayer funds have already been disbursed to presidential candidates.
Even Ross Perot, who made a fetish about paying for his 1992 campaign out of his own pocket, succumbed to the attraction of free money and took $30 million to pay for his quixotic campaign this year.
These funds come from the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, which gets its money from funds designated by taxpayers on their tax returns. Each check-off sends $3 dollars into the campaign fund. Since this check-off is essentially costless, because it does not lower one's refund or increase one's tax liability, it is a good measure of taxpayer opinion on public funding for elections.
So it is significant that just 13 percent of taxpayers in 1994 checked yes on their returns, down from 27.5 percent in 1976 (see figure). This is as close to a national referendum against public financing as we are likely to get. It means that reformers will have to find some other way to clean up election financing without using taxpayer money.
Source: Bruce R. Bartlett (National Center for Policy Analysis), October 28, 1996.
For more on Campaign Finance visit the Policy Digest Government & Politics archive at http://www.ncpa.org/pd/govern/govern.html
