Source: Harvard Institute of Politics, 4/22/18.
Chart: Voting Behavior by Age Group
Typically, less than half of registered 18-29 year-olds vote in presidential elections.
Tag: Elections
Chart: Dark Money
Dark Money groups are growing in size, scope, and share of election spending with each election cycle.
The total amount of “dark money” — campaign spending that cannot be traced back to individuals due to intentional obfuscation of its source in recent elections.
Source: Center for Responsive Politics, 4/19/18.
Dark Money’s Alchemy
The Center for Responsive Politics documents how corporations and the rich’s money flows through multiple front groups to ultimately influence elections, but without traceability. This is not “one person, one vote.”
Chart: Campaign Super Donors
Campaign super donors make up about .01% of the population and yet were 40% of all campaign contributors in 2016.
A political system by and for the rich?
Source: NYT 12/17/17.
NRA’s power is in mobilizing voters, not their campaign contributions
Far more than any check the N.R.A. could write, it is this mobilization operation that has made the organization such a challenging adversary for Democrats and gun control advocates
Far more than any check the N.R.A. could write, it is this mobilization operation that has made the organization such a challenging adversary for Democrats and gun control advocates
Lobbying and dark money in politics is bad and distorts our democratic system of one person one vote, but eligible voter complacency is the worst distorter of the people’s will.
Chart: Who Votes in Midterms
There are three ways to compel a democratically elected government to act:
- A revolution – overthrow them.
- Agitation that is strong and so pervasive in the media, and yet sympathetically covered, that the voting majority is influenced by the group’s actions in their voting choices.
- Voting.
Source: NYT 2/28/18.
Economist, Albert Hirschman described disgruntled citizens’ options: Exit, Voice, or Loyalty. Voting is voice.
Chart: Racial Diversity and Place
The more rural a location, the less diverse its population.
Chart: State-level PAC contributions
Uncontrolled and untrackable corporate campaign contributions distort state-level races as much, if not more, than federal races.
U.S. companies have found a loophole in state campaign-finance rules by funneling donations aimed at helping candidates through the [Republican Governors Association, or RGA, a Republican fundraising PAC] and its Democratic counterpart, according to multiple former officials. Donors can’t earmark money for a particular candidate. Instead, they can simply—and legally—tell the groups they have “an interest” in a race or are making a donation “at the request” of a gubernatorial candidate, these officials say.
An internal tracking system, sometimes called the “tally,” allows the [Democratic Governors Association, DGA] to keep tabs on how much individual governors raise for the association from companies and other donors, which later helps it figure out how to allocate the money, former DGA officials said. The RGA has a similar system, former RGA officials say.
…
Multiple former RGA and DGA officials described the practice of guiding donations as an open secret. The available public data hint at a pattern, too. Over the past decade, 42 S&P 500 index companies gave donations of $100,000 or more to the RGA or DGA. Donations by 19 of those companies were followed by an RGA or DGA expenditure of the same or greater amount within a month in a state where the company has operations, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that tracks campaign donations.
Source: WSJ 12/30/17.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-modern-campaign-finance-loophole-governors-associations-1514562975
Hogs at the Trough…
Fund-raisers held by members of the conference committee during the tax reform debate were hot tickets for tax lobbyists, who eagerly forked over a few hundred — or even a few thousand — dollars for face time with lawmakers who controlled the fate of valued loopholes.
Some sadly business-as-usual quotes from a Times article on the behind the scenes efforts of Washington lobbyists around the Republican 2017 tax bill.
In all, more than half of the 11,000 registered lobbyists in Washington reported working on tax-related issues through the first nine months of the year, according to a report released this month by the nonprofit group Public Citizen.
…
No matter how convincing the policy analysis or how steady the constituent pressure, though, personal and financial connections to policymakers remained among the most important currency on K Street during the tax debate, as has been the case in legislative battles for decades.
Fund-raisers held by members of the conference committee during the tax reform debate were hot tickets for tax lobbyists, who eagerly forked over a few hundred — or even a few thousand — dollars for face time with lawmakers who controlled the fate of valued loopholes.
Mr. Portman has held fund-raisers in recent weeks, and has another one scheduled for next week at the fashionable Charlie Palmer Steak restaurant across the street from the Capitol. Attendees are being asked to donate $1,000 each through their political action committees or $250 in personal funds, according to an invitation, which bills the event as a “birthday breakfast” for Mr. Portman, whose birthday is the day before the event.
A Republican who attended a fund-raiser late last month for another member of the conference committee, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, said several lobbyists asked the senator about tax reform. Mr. Cornyn kept his responses vague, telling attendees that he was hopeful that the process could be completed before Christmas.
Source: NYTimes 12/16/17.
Map: Election Predication (Failures)
