Campaign Funding, Judges

Time to look more into a problem that is very complicated: campaign finance. While most Americans believe it skews the process in the favor of wealthy candidates and is a hurdle to achieving true democracy, many people also believe it is a problem that is very difficult and even impossible to solve. Today I am looking at public funded campaigns and their results.
It will be difficult to gauge the results in a national election because "clean elections" are only being implemented on lower level elections. The biggest problem so far, predictably, has been securing enough funding for candidates to run. Several other candidates also expressed the concern that they would not secure enough money and did not run. Local level elections simply do not garner the amount of attention or interest that the higher up elections do, so this is a predictable problem. However, it does lower the confidence of the public in clean funding. The Fair Elections Now Act is trying to mitigate this problem by requiring that broadcast time be cheaper for candidates running using public financing.
The American Anti-corruption Act first of all has a very nice website. It seeks to prevent members of Congress from taking money from industries that they regulate, limit Super PAC contributions, prevent the use of job offers as "bribes", limit lobbying, mandate transparency in funding, increase public donations, and strengthen the Federal Election Commission. The analysts who made this reform (some of whom are from the Federal Election Commission) have been careful to address all the concerns the public may have, including its cost and constitutionality.
The Grassroots Democracy Act also focuses on congressional campaigns. The fact that all of these reforms start at that level show the deep roots of the problem. In order to limit the role money plays in politics, we have to start at the bottom. There are several reasons for this, including that it's easier to fix the "smaller" problems and then work up. A success at the congressional level will also rally support for reforms at the presidential campaign level. Such a success or a move towards success would also help with some of the skepticism that people have about limiting financing.

I started writing my product paper. The intro and the conclusion will probably be the hardest.
Also I spent some time in class contacting judges in order to pick a presentation date.