Campaign Finance Reform
A look at campaign finance reforms proposed in 2024
What is Campaign Finance Reform?
Campaign finance reform is an umbrella term for proposals to reform the laws about the funds raised and money spent on electoral campaigns, including candidates, parties, initiatives and referendums. The goal is to increase transparency and limit the role of big money in politics, through policies that shine a light on dark money, provide public dollars to replace private funding for campaigns, and ban certain foreign entities from spending in our elections.
One of the main campaign finance reforms targeted by lawmakers this year was public campaign financing programs.
Why are we tracking it?
The high cost of running elections keeps politicians fundraising year-round. Election reformers work on proposals that change the way money flows through campaigns because those laws can have a substantial impact on who runs and ultimately represents voters, while rooting out big money and corruption in politics.
The network of laws and regulations that cover campaign finance is massive. To fully encapsulate the laws introduced in that category is beyond the scope of this project. This report focuses on a few discrete reforms within the larger campaign finance umbrella, including various models of public campaign financing and proposals banning foreign-influenced corporations from spending in elections.
Categories and definitions:
- FIC ban: A law that prohibits foreign-influenced business entities from making contributions or expenditures for election purposes. Definitions may vary, but generally, foreign-influenced business entity refers to a publicly-traded corporation that is at least partially owned by a foreign citizen, foreign corporation, or foreign government.
- Public campaign finance (PCF): A law that establishes a publicly-funded program for qualifying candidates for public office to receive public dollars. The method or model by which that money is distributed may vary, but common models include lump-sum payments, public matching programs, or a voucher-based program.
- Lump Sum: provides public funding for campaigns by giving lump sums of public dollars to qualifying candidates for public office. To qualify, candidates must meet a set of requirements for participation that can range widely between jurisdictions, but often include rules such as adhering to certain contribution limits, not taking large private donations, and demonstrating broad voter support through signatures or small-dollar donations.
- Public match: a type of public campaign finance program where small-dollar donations to qualifying or participating candidates are matched with public dollars.
- Democracy dollars (also know as democracy vouchers): a system of public campaign financing where voters are issued vouchers that they can donate to political candidates who, in turn, redeem them for public campaign funds.
- Local Public Campaign Financing Programs: Establishes a public campaign financing program for county or municipal elections.
- Technical Program Changes: This covers proposals that would change elements of existing public campaign financing programs, from qualification requirements for participation to changes around disbursement of public funds.
- Public Campaign Financing Repeal: This category covers legislative attempts to repeal existing PCF programs.
Analysis
The category of campaign finance covers a wide range of policies, and there was a wide range of noteworthy legislative outcomes and trends in this category, including attacks on these reforms from lawmakers in red and blue states.
Public campaign financing under attack. One of the main campaign finance reforms targeted by lawmakers this year was public campaign financing programs. Florida is the only state with a public financing program enshrined in the state’s constitution, but in 2024, the state’s Republican majority passed a legislatively referred ballot question (SJR 1114, appearing on the ballot as Amendment 6) to repeal this program – even though voters shot down a similar proposal as recently as 2010 and did so again in the November election.
In New York, the state’s recently reformed small-dollar matching system saw attempts to weaken those reforms before they even took effect. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) vetoed a bill passed by the state’s Democratic majority in December 2023 that would have reduced the impact of small donations by allowing the first $250 of any contribution to a campaign in an election cycle to be matched by state funding. Currently, the program only allows matching donations for contributors who gave no more than $250 in a cycle, so allowing the first $250 of all donations (including maximum donations) to be matched would have, in her words, been “[a] direct contravention of the purpose” of the public campaign finance program. These efforts were revived during the 2024 session but did not reach the Governor’s desk.
Lastly, the Democratic trifecta in Hawaii had an opportunity this session to pass huge campaign finance reforms, following a particularly scandalous year of corruption scandals in 2022 that saw two lawmakers plead guilty to bribery schemes. Unfortunately, we saw a similar version of what happened in 2023: a comprehensive package of reforms (SB 2381) to expand the existing public financing program passed unanimously in the Senate before it died in the Democrat-controlled House.
Fewer FIC bans. In 2023, we noticed an emerging trend of election spending bans on foreign-influenced corporations (FICs). There were 5 proposals introduced (Washington’s HB 1885 and SB 5832, California’s AB 83, Massachusetts’s H 772 and S 430) that followed the model that became popular last year, which defined FICs as corporations with at least 1% ownership by a single foreign person, entity, or government, or at least 5% ownership by more than one foreign person, entity, or government. However, we’ve noted a chilling effect on this specific reform model, perhaps due to some legal challenges to Minnesota’s Democracy For the People Act.
No FIC bans (with the definition above) passed this year, and introductions in this category generally shrunk by 56% from last year. However, other variants of foreign interference legislation have made progress this year, like Colorado’s SB 210, which bans foreign nationals and foreign corporations from making election expenditures for ballot measures. Additionally, there were proposals in Missouri (HB 2485) and Ohio (SB 215) focusing on corporations and nonprofits with their principal place of business in a foreign country, and five other proposals (Illinois’ SB 290, Arizona’s HCR 2056, Colorado’s SB 210, Missouri’s SJR 74, Oklahoma’s HB 3815) focusing on just banning contributions and electioneering expenditures by foreign nationals. The Arizona and Missouri proposals passed one house, in addition to the Colorado legislation that passed. With a relatively new reform like this, it’s too early to call something a trend but the outcome of the Minnesota law’s legal challenges could cause the tides to change again next session.
New contribution limits in Oregon. There’s one major campaign finance development outside the scope of this report that we’d be remiss to not include: Oregon passed its first campaign finance restrictions in 50 years. HB 4024 enacts limits on campaign contributions while improving reporting of the true original source of funds spent independently of candidates and strengthening enforcement. These limits are half a century in the making; the legislature tried to pass limits in 1973 but were overturned by the Oregon Supreme Court, then in 1994 voters passed limits but were also overturned by the Supreme Court, then in 2006 only one of two necessary citizen-initiated measures passed, and in 2019 lawmakers cleared the way for a constitutional amendment that passed but did not receive the necessary supporting legislation for implementation.
A wide range of important issues fall under the umbrella of campaign finance reform, and we can only track a portion of it here. Regardless of the focus, the Oregon example shows how difficult it can be for proposals in this category to become law.