Political Campaign Finance Reform

Do you know why and how the money for the electoral campaigns is regulated? Well, money has been related with the elections since the origin of the electoral process in the United States. The elections started with candidates like George Washington. When he ran for the Virginia House Burgesses in 1758, his election manager “prized” each one of the voters with a half gallon of alcoholic beverages as a token for Freeholders on the Election Day. Since then, during each electoral campaign, more and more money has been involved during the electoral campaigns. In 1971 the Congress passed a comprehensive redo of the campaign finance regulations with the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). But the FECA was too broad, so in 1974 was amended with the introduction of statutory limits on contributions and created the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In 2002 the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) was signed into a federal law. The BCRA is commonly known as "the political effort in the United States to change the involvement of money in politics, primarily in political campaigns.” This Act revised some of the illegal on expenditures set by the FECA, and prohibited unregulated contributions, which usually referred as “Soft money.” But it doesn’t matter how many laws the Congress passed,there are always going to be a loop hole and the candidates are going to use it during their campaigns. For example there is a limit of $2,300 on contribution per individual, but during the last campaign for the presidency of United States in 2008 between Obama and McCain, they were able to accept over $70,000 per individual on behalf of their campaigns. They divided the donations to “meet the law requirements” and gave the rest to their political party’s committees. So as you can see, at the end it does not matter how many laws are created, the truth is, that the size of the pockets of the candidates will determine who the winner is during the elections.