American Polity by Serow

American Polity by Serow and Leadership

Readings for Apr 09

Serow #73 by Kathleen Sullivan and Derek Cressman; The Constitution and Campaign Reform (p530)

1974 Federal Election Campaign Act – initial reform which limited contributions
Kathleen Sullivan – Dean of Stanford Law School: impossible to close loopholes allowing money into politics

Undesirable to limit political speech before an election
Unintended Influence – Political Action Committee (PAC) b/c major influence w/ money from interest groups
American gov is not very corrupt
Corruption is an inequality of influence
Buckly’s reform very bad – flawed democratic idea, violates 1^st Amendment

Limits contributions but did not address demand
Demand will stay, and money will just flow to alternate paths (parties, PACs, etc)
Therefore, reform has only driven money away from candidates who are responsible to Americans
Independent orgs harder to control

Especially hard to control because they avoid expressly supporting candidates which is not in the Framers beliefs (thought political speech was about getting people to vote so it should not be “driven underground”)

Lower contribution limits to allow less wealthy Americans to make notable contributions
Money is a big factor in who runs

Candidates who spent the most won 94% of general election Senate and 95% of House races

Money would be a good barometer of public support if it came equally from all Americans

Most of contribution amount from a few rich people
Large donors are not rep – most are older (60+), white, male (80%+), 81% income >100k

Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Gov PAC – limits upheld (Sup Crt)
Buckley v. Valeo – rejected the idea that inflation had made $1,000 too little

Limits should be set at levels affordable to average Americans
States who lowered contributions found more people contributed and that candidates could still campaign

They ended up spending less time calling wealthy donors and more time at grass roots events

Serow #77 by Mark Monmonier; Bushmanders and Bullwinkles (p564)

Overview of the remapping of election districts and how boundaries can serve or hurt parties, incum, or racial/eth grps
Census decides how the districts will be reapportioned so that they are equal in pop, ensuring “one person, one vote”
Gerrymander – deliberately inc the # of districts in which a particular party or group is the majority

From 1812 when Gerry was MA gov and carved out a thin Rep district along parts of Essex County
Reporter pointed out that the new district looked like a salamander, and the term “gerrymander” was coined

Many districts have nicknames because of their zoning
Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits cartographers from splitting a district where a minority group constitute a majority
To supplement the electoral maps of indiv states, the Bureau of the Census publishes the Congressional District Atlas
Rep admin favor AfAmer and Latino candidates, who are almost certain to be Dem because they want to create safe districts in which minority candidates were likely to win

In this manner, the Bush Rep added white voters to formerly Dem districts, which responded, by electing Rep

Should race matter, should shape matter and should geography matter when setting up districts?

Altman could find no evidence that bizarre districts cause ‘expressive harms’
Constitution mandates neither compactness nor contiguity, so should geography matter?

Author argues that traditional district boundaries do not work as well as they once did
Contorted boundaries are clearly less dysfunctional than silhouette maps