Super Amazing Fun Module 3 Blog Posting, a.k.a. Nominations, Campaigns and Elections, oh my!

This week we the brave, daring and intrepid poli. sci. students are tasked with blogging about election rules and factions. The first thing that comes to mind for most of us is of course Federalist No. 10, triggered by that notorious word: faction. After being proverbially clubbed over the head with this wonderfully crafted and reasoned piece of text, I've developed a nearly Pavlovian response to that word. ok maybe im being a little melodramatic and straying from the topic at hand - but that text clearly is incredibly important and relevant to the topic at hand and to the field we are studying in general. And for good reason.

Gah! I'm straying from the topic again. Ok, so our assignment has given many questions to answer. to quote our assignment directly "the text suggests that primaries were implemented to 'diminish the influence of political organizations on political life.' have unintended consequences been produced by new rules? what about complexities in the ways in which different electoral institutions hav been grafted together?" Whoa. These are some loaded questions. There are however more ...
"Compare nominations to campaign finance reform. How might the current campaign finance regulatory regime affect partisanship?" (jeez. what is the current campaign finance regulatory regime anyway?) "do efforts to reform elections through primaries and the regulation of money in elections work at cross-purposes? consider both sides of this question. Finally, are these goals even realistic? Can the influence of (all) factions be purged from American elections? And if we could do this, would we want to?" Yowza. ok if we are going to successfully tackle this assignment we need to break down these questions, and answer them in a rather boring but straightforward way. you know it, i love it: it's the point-by-point.

1. Have unintended consequences been produced by new rules (because of primaries)? 1a. What about complexities in the ways in which different electoral institutions have been grafted together?
Ok, to answer this we have to look at the basic structure of primaries. from the video lecture we learned that there are three commonly used methods of conducting a primary: caucuses, party conventions and direct primaries. The different methods have different effects on primary turnouts, but im a little unclear if this is really the question that we are to answer. I think what we are really trying to get at is what is the impact of primaries in general on the political institutions of our country. For starters, they are not governed by the government, but by the parties - the parties can re-structure them however they like. wow that's kind of a big impact! we have a step in selecting our law makers that itself is not governed by law.
How can this be? Primaries in most states are required by law (I think). Beyond this, I don't think that the states say very much. Sure, they (the states) have laws that have requirements for having enough signatures to form parties on things like which parties can hold primaries, but they don't really go beyond that. In other words states don't dictate party rules for who can be a member of a party or how those parties can chose to chose their candidates beyond a very basic threshold. What I find interesting about all of this is that there is a big part of the election system that is not under heavy legal guidance. We willingly let the parties choose who the want and then elect our political leaders as a consequence of their choices.
Ok, so that leaves us with the question: What are some of the consequences of primaries? well for starters, we effectively mandate that parties have to be an inherent part of the electoral process ( at least for federal systems). One consequence of this is that we begin to limit ourselves to very few large, rich and powerful parties instead of smaller ones. Perhaps this is one of the many reasons that we have had 2 major parties for so long. Another consequence is that this limits the number and variety of candidates that we can have for any position.

2. How might the current campaign finance regulatory regime affect partisanship?
To answer this question, we should first look at what the current campaign finance regulatory regime is. Under the Federal Election Commission (FEC) the spending and funding of candidates is closely monitored. The most recent legislation on campaign financing is the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), otherwise known as the McCain/Feingold Campaign finance reform law. To quote Wikipedia in all of its questionableness:
"The BCRA was a mixed bag for those who wanted to remove the money from politics. It eliminated all soft money donations to the national party committees, but it also doubled the contribution limit of hard money, from $1,000 to $2,000 per election cycle, with a built-in increase for inflation. In addition, the bill aimed to curtail ads by non-party organizations by banning the use of corporate or union money to pay for "electioneering communications," a term defined as broadcast advertising that identifies a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary or nominating convention, or 60 days of a general election." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform
So, what does this mean for partisanship? It means a few things. First, it limits where candidates and parties can get their funding by setting a maximum donation amount per person. A result of this is that parties and candidates have to appeal to more people to get more donations. This in turn leads us down the road of two possible outcomes, and two possible impacts for partisanship. Candidates and parties could end up going the "big tent" route and attempt to broaden their appeal to many people. This is not uncommon and it tends to result in very moderate parties and candidates. On the other hand we have also seen in some elections the exact opposite. Sometimes candidates and local parties will run a very partisan hand, especially in districts where they are very popular. By doing this, they play to the more hard-core end of their base and will try to get "more of their people donating and voting than the other guy". The results of this are very high partisanship.

3. Do efforts to reform elections through primaries and the regulation of money in elections work at cross-purposes? I'm not sure what cross-purposes means, however I think that primaries and finance regulations in the end have the net effect of really pushing candidates to perform well. I also think that campaign finance reform and primaries can work against eachother. Primaries generally push candidates to be more partisan and to stick closer to the party line. This contrasts pretty harshly with the mediating effects of campaign finance reform which practically forces candidates to behave more moderately. This seems like a non-answer but I think that the results can both be collusive and contradictory, because they are not mutually exclusive.

4. Finally, are these goals even realistic? 4a. Can the influence of (all) factions be purged from American elections? 4b. And if we could do this, would we want to?
The short answer: No, not realistic; No, an influence free election isnt possible; and No, we wouldnt want that even if we could.
The long answer: No the goal of having an influence free election isnt realistic, however the goal of reducing the amount of impact that influence groups have on elections is. In my humble opinion, I think that we want to keep some influence groups around - they aid and play a significant role in pushing policy development forward. Furthermore, the end result of influence groups is that congress gets at a bare minimum of something done, with perhaps a more tight accountability than the districts alone might provide. Because of this, I think that we wouldnt want to get rid of interest groups, even if we could.

Wow, another homerian blog for another week done. Good night and good luck. (props to whoever can identify that line).

As an end thought I'd like to ask, what you think of the impact of interest groups in politics, whether it is good or bad.