Campaigns and Elections

Throughout this topic, you learned that campaigns and elections are not always as simple as they may seem. While the ideal is for the best candidate for the job to receive the position, the reality is much more complex. Winning elections is the key to power in a representative democracy. That element alone leads to vast amounts of campaign money being spent by super Political Action Committees (PACs), clever political maneuvering by politicians, and the exploitation of legal loopholes, in actions like gerrymandering. Campaign finance legislation has been passed to help limit the influence of money on elections, from requiring candidates to disclose their larger donors, to setting up a public fund for qualified presidential candidates. It is important to remember that the largest source of funding for political candidates is individual donors. The smaller contributions made by millions of average Americans add up to a substantial amount of money. This fact, combined with the continually expanding importance of the Internet with online fundraising and grassroots campaigns helps level the field for potential candidates for public office.