Elected officials being responsive to the needs and interests of the people is at the core of what it means to have a representative democracy. Through the ballot box, voters are given the power to effectively steer policy-making by electing candidates who represent their vision for the country. In turn, electoral competition is supposed to incentivize politicians to follow through with their campaign promises and fully align themselves with the wishes of their constituents. However, this idealized version of democracy where government policy reflects public demand does not always play out in the United States.
For instance, back in 2020, an overwhelming majority of Americans endorsed a second round of stimulus checks, and polls estimated that some 76% of adults supported payments of $1,000 or more. But after months of stalemate — a delay that exacerbated the economic downturn at the end of the year, Congress passed a much smaller relief bill which most Americans believed to be insufficient. Similarly, despite 6 in 10 Americans supporting an increase of the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, the policy has been soundly rejected in the Senate by significant margins.
At first, this gap between what the people want and the policies that actually make it through the government seems paradoxical. If politicians are not properly representing their constituents, they should be getting replaced in the following elections by candidates more responsive to voters. Yet, in spite of almost 7 in 10 Americans disapproving of the way Congress handles its job, more than 90% of representatives in the House and around 85% of senators are re-elected each election cycle on average. So why is it that so many politicians are able to remain unresponsive to the demands of such a large portion of American public? The answer is quite straightforward: money.
Running a campaign is not cheap. In the 2018 elections, victorious House candidates spent an average of $2 million on their campaigns, while successful Senate candidates spent an average of $15.7 million. The cost of running for president is even more staggering, as the 2020 election saw presidential candidates spend a combined total of $1.3 billion in their campaigns. The high price tag of running for office means that it is not enough for candidates to have innovative ideas or, in the case of incumbents, to be responsive to their constituents while in office. Since early fundraising can be a determinant of electoral success, especially in primary races, politicians also depend on donations to reach or remain in office.
But not all donations are made equal. Since the controversial Supreme Court ruling for Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which in 2010 declared that limiting “independent political spending” was a violation of the First Amendment, outside groups have been able to accept unlimited donations on behalf of candidates. This created super Political Action Committees (or super PACs) that are able to accept unrestricted donations from corporations and pour billions into campaigns. Donations from wealthy individual donors have also been disproportionate, as the 10 wealthiest contributors have invested more than $1.2 billion into federal elections over the last decade. In stark contrast, only 1.5% of Americans donated more than $200 in the 2020 election cycle.
This presents a big problem for our government. As campaign costs spiral out of control, our politicians become more and more dependent on wealthy donors and corporations. This undermines the spirit of democracy, as elected officials become beholden to their biggest contributors instead of their constituents. Meaningful change becomes harder as a result, as candidates that fall out of favor with America’s wealthiest financiers risk having their campaign funds stripped away and given to an opponent. The elevated costs of launching a campaign have also been correlated with a decrease in newcomer candidates and an increase in the proportion of wealthy contenders, given that big donors disproportionately invest funds into already well-known politicians.
Getting “big money” out of politics is therefore essential for democracy in the United States to be truly representative. This issue is so broadly recognized that both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders — politicians that disagree on virtually all fronts — agreed on the 2016 presidential campaign trail that the influence of money in politics needed to be reduced. However, fixing this issue is much easier said than done. As things currently stand, overturning Citizens United would require either a constitutional amendment or a new Supreme Court decision overturning its 2010 decision. Both of these alternatives are very unlikely to go very far for now, especially given how polarized Congress is and how politicized the judicial branch is becoming.
Until then, it may be possible for the United States to go down a third path. In 2015, Seattle became the first city in the nation to approve a “Democracy Voucher Program.” This revolutionary initiative would distribute $100 worth of “Democracy Vouchers” to all eligible voters, which could then be used to support candidates running for mayor, city council, or city attorney. The idea behind Democracy Vouchers was first proposed by Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who in a New York Times article argued that the best way to beat big money was to make “the funders the people.” In his view, creating a voucher system that allowed all voters to contribute toward elections would make it so that the biggest shares of campaign donations came from the “very many” and not the wealthy few. In doing so, the balance of political sway would shift back to constituents.
Though Seattle is so far the only place in which Professor Lessig’s hypothesis can be tested, the effects of the initiative look promising. After the program first launched, the estimated number of small donations in Seattle tripled from 8,200 in 2013 to at least 25,000 in 2017, with around 84% of the donors being new donors. This number would once again increase in the 2019 elections to at least 36,000, making Seattle the national leader in donor participation. Data also suggests that the voucher donors were a much better reflection of Seattle’s population, as more young people, women, people of color, and economically disadvantaged residents were able to contribute to campaigns for the first time.
But does increasing the amount of “small money” really reduce the influence of big donors in politics? In 2019, Amazon invested over $1.5 million on the Seattle City Council election in hopes of barring progressive politicians from increasing the city’s corporate tax. But despite this money drop, the corporate-backed candidates lost five out of the seven races. In this election cycle, spending from Democracy Vouchers reached over $1.4 million and accounted for almost 20% of total expenditures. These funds gave candidates without well-established donor bases the opportunity to launch an effective campaign against opponents that were favored by corporate interests. It also created a much more diverse set of candidates, allowing more people of color and from the working class to throw their hat in the ring. While further analysis might be needed to determine the causal effect of Democracy Vouchers in the defeat of Amazon, they at the very least made the playing field much less skewed in favor of wealthy donors.
The one basic principle behind democracy is that the voice of all citizens should have the same value. However, as long as political campaigns involve exaggerated costs that can only be covered by massive donations, the voice of the wealthy few will continue to drown the voices of the very many. Until it somehow manages to implement sweeping campaign finance reform and overturn Citizens United, the government must develop more systems like the Democracy Voucher Program that give the American people agency over elections. Only by getting small money into politics can we hope to finally beat big money.
Image by Darren Halstead is licensed under the Unsplash License.
