Justifications for campaign finance regulations in the United States have traditionally taken one of two approaches. The first and most common has been to allege that unrestricted campaign contributions and expenditures lend themselves to corruption, or to the appearance of corruption. The second, used far less often than the first, has argued that unchecked spending on an election compromises the principle of political equality--the idea that each individual should have equal say in the democratic process. This paper defends political equality as a value worth preserving, demonstrates that our current campaign finance system is dangerous to political equality, proposes some solutions to that problem, and evaluate the constitutionality of those solutions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CLAREMONT/oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:cmc_theses-1269 |
| Date | 01 January 2011 |
| Creators | Paterson, Patrick |
| Publisher | Scholarship @ Claremont |
| Source Sets | Claremont Colleges |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | CMC Senior Theses |
| Rights | © 2011 Patrick Paterson |
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