Funding, Product Paper

Finding some sources to support my stance on large amounts of campaign funding:
About $7 billion total was spent during the 2012 presidential election, according to the Federal Election Commission. This was even more money than was predicted ($6 billion). [x]

An estimated $4 billion was spent on the 2014 midterm elections, with $1 million being spent on campaign ads (half of these ads were negative). [x] [x]
Today I ran into a concerning problem called "dark money" which is becoming the next shady, behind the curtains way to give money to political candidates (in the family of soft money and super PACs, etc.). Dark money is used to support candidates and is given through non-tax deductible donations to 501c non-profit organizations who are not legally considered to be political. These donations do not have to be disclosed and thus make it harder to track candidate spending as well as the source of the money. As more and more of these underhand money swaps occur during elections, I am becoming more convinced to address the problem of campaign finance; the challenge is finding a viable solution. As I am currently discussing the nomination process in my paper, I do still have time to solidify ideas regarding clean campaigns.

I ended up running into some articles that address popular concerns about IRV. This article backs up the idea that IRV would lower negative campaigns by forcing candidates to work together to gain second choice positions. This study concludes that minorities are more likely to support IRV than the conventional runoff voting in that election and that it was reported as being easy to understand by voters of all races. The year it was implemented, turnout increased citywide by 2.7 times, and in the city’s six most racially and socio-economically diverse neighborhoods turnout quadrupled in the 2005 citywide election.

Senior updates:
I paid my dues and the yearbook money and all that
I can't find the last picture for the senior banquet list (I guess my family doesn't take pictures all together often)