These sources of campaign funding are individuals, political action committees, and party committees. Individual donations are money that are directly given to candidates from the individual people of the nation. These donations while smaller normally add up and can generate a large amount of funding for a candidate. Political action committees or PACs, are groups created in support of a candidate and their agendas. These groups not only give funding but often run their own campaigns alongside the candidates in order to help them in their efforts. Party committees are donations that come directly from the party itself. Often times individuals give the party committee money in order to give to the candidate. National party committees often put their funding into funding national elections such as the president while state and local party committees focus on local and state positions however state and local committees can focus on spreading the agenda of the presidential election while the national focuses largely on the candidates campaign itself (Maloney, 2013, p. 8). In order to prevent the abuse of this system and prevent a candidate from using an unlimited amount of funds towards their election, restrictions are placed on the amount that can come from each group. From individuals a maximum amount per election cycle of 2,600 …show more content…
The two most important of these would be the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 and the Citizens United decision. The BCRA is a law signed by President George Bush that sets limits on campaign spending and contains several changes to the federal campaign finance law. This law covered several topics such as soft money and how campaign funding could be used. Soft money is nonfederal money or money raised outside the federal campaign finance law. The act prohibited national parties from raising or spending these funds and limited how soft money could affect those on a local level. The act helped restrict how campaign funding can be used as well and where the money could go. This was to prevent richer candidates from gaining in advantage while at the same time allowing more money to be taken from different groups for campaign funding (Corrado, 2005, p. 17). The Citizens United vs FEC supreme court case is an important case regarding how companies are able to spend money during an election and helped show the power behind packs. This court case made it so that companies could spend unlimited amount of money in an election but it could not go directly to a candidate. This helped push the creation of PACs and super PACs as it allowed companies to put money