Sunday, April 30, 2006

Southeast Missourian continues campaign finance study

A bill that would eliminate campaign contribution limits apparently is going nowhere during this legislative session, but it is the center of an absorbing study of campaign financing by the Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian.
The politicians quoted in the article seem to believe there is no middle ground between public financing of elections and totally removing the contribution limits. It is noted that since limits were put into effect in 1994 money has been funneled into county committees, then sent to the candidates.
Perhaps we should look at closing off these loopholes and making candidates actually follow the rules. The popular idea seems to be to remove the limits and require complete disclosure. While that sounds good on the face of it, there are only a handful of media outlets that do any kind of serious examinations of campaign contributions, and most of those center on who has raised the most money and not the source of that money.

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