Sources of Negative Effects on Voter Expression

America was founded as a representative democracy, not a direct one, but is that still the best way to run things?  The founders of the nation knew that information was hard to come by at the time and citizens were mostly uninformed, they needed more educated people to make important decisions for them.  However, with the emergence of the internet, Americans have more access to information than ever and therefore can make informed decisions in politics.  While many news sources may be biased, Americans still have opinions that define how they conduct themselves and influence their political alignment.  Individual opinions aren't the only things that determine how a person will vote, however, there are a lot of outside factors that many registered voters may not know about that influence them every day, from their beliefs to their votes.

Modern American politics are largely defined by the prevalence of the two-party system that’s existed for a large portion of American history.  Going back to 1828, “the election's signal achievement [has] to be its contribution ‘to the rise of democracy and mass political parties’ as politicians employed ‘partisan campaign techniques on a scale never seen before, laid the groundwork for the Democratic and Whig parties, got Americans into the habit of coming out to vote for president in large numbers, and elevated a new type of American [Jackson] to the presidency’” (Latner).  Political party affiliation had been around for a while before the 1828 election but the election brought it to a new level, along with changing the way politicians campaigned and presented themselves.  In the two-party system, there are two political parties with the most influence over the political agenda, but there are several smaller “third” parties that influence politics as well.  Even though these parties may not have the backing of a lot of registered voters, there are ways for them to influence the two major parties.  One-issue parties, like the Right to Life Party, show that a topic is of interest to the American public and help to put said issue on the political agenda.  Another important type of “third” party is ideological parties.  These parties offer a different approach to governing, such as the Socialist party or Libertarian party.  “Third” parties can act as a check on the two large parties by theoretically forcing them to adapt to the opinions of the public and by developing ideas that can be adopted by other parties, such as the Anti-Masons’ creation of the National Convention.  While the number of voters registering as independents has increased in recent years as compared to decades in the past, there are still certain aspects of the election process that prevent "third" parties from gaining any real footing in Washington D.C. (Collet).  Between the constant technical barriers that "third"-party candidates face to the common belief that voting for a "third"-party candidate in a national election is a waste of a vote, "third" parties face major difficulties in gaining national prominence.  Even though voters may register with a "third" party, when it comes to voting, the actual manifestation of their beliefs, they are partially “forced” to pick a side that they don’t fully support.  In retrospective voting, people will vote against the candidate they don’t think did a good job in office and many people vote for the “lesser of two evils,” or the candidate they hate less (Bruzda).  In other words, Americans are largely dissatisfied with the people who govern them, but are given few options to choose from.  Many aspects of the current political climate and policy force Americans to express their opinions in one of two lanes of predetermined thought.  They are mostly due to the intentional preservation of the two-party system, incumbents’ prioritization of self-interest, and the modern interpretation of the Constitution’s impact on political campaigns and finances.  

The importance of political parties to voters has come into question in recent years, “a debate emerged among political scientists and observers over whether the Republicans and Democrats - and partisanship itself - were indeed in decline” (Collet).  The numbers show that more Americans are registering as independent, but “That pattern, however, is deceiving.  Some surveys ask independents if they lean towards one party or the other, and those that do are termed ‘closet partisans.’ These individuals basically vote just like voters that outright associate with one of the major parties.  So, the general pattern is that increased polarization of our politicians since the 1970s has contributed to stronger partisanship among voters, not an increase in independents (only around 10% today are true independents)” (Bruzda).  So while more Americans seem to be aligning with the two major parties, it’s not always for the right reasons.  An emerging trend among voters is “negative partisanship,” where people choose to affiliate themselves with one major party motivated by their hatred or disapproval of the other major party.  Americans are becoming less and less content with the two major parties, but this isn’t always reflected in their vote, and that isn’t by their own choice.  The electoral system of winner-takes-all promotes the common notion among Americans that voting for a “third” party or independent candidate is a waste of a vote.  

The winner-takes-all method also allows “third” parties to act as spoilers, meaning they take away enough votes from one major candidate to allow the other major candidate to win the state.  Because of this actuality, “It also forces ‘third’-party voters, at least in closely contested states, to think strategically when they vote: should they vote for their preferred candidate, perhaps allowing their least favored candidate to win, or should they vote for the ‘lesser of two evils’ among the major-party candidates?” (Florey).  While all voters technically have the option of voting for a non-major party candidate, it’s not always that simple.  Almost all informed voters are aware of the fact that “third” parties very rarely win the plurality in a state and it’s even rarer that they win the presidency.  As is eerily similar to the political system in George Orwell’s 1984, Americans may have their own opinions in their heads, but they are unable to express those opinions officially through their vote.  When O’Brien spoke to Winston about the methods of the party, he ascertained, “When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will....  We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him.  We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul” (Orwell 255).  While this is much more extreme than what it represents in the modern-day, there’s a semblance of truth to it.  Technically, people aren’t “forced” to pick one of the two main candidates, if they decide to vote that way it’s because they chose to.  However, if they chose to vote for a “third” party candidate, their voice would be insignificant compared to the number of votes the main-party candidates will receive.  

Political parties act as a shortcut for uninformed voters to decide who to vote for while leaving the voices of the less-conforming voters to be stuck with a similar decision.  Since the two major parties are so well known to all Americans, “Voters do not need to know anything about candidates besides their partisan affiliation in order to make a roughcut guess about each candidate's politics. Studies consistently have shown that Democratic politicians are more liberal and Republican politicians more conservative on a host of issues” (Hasen).  This is the reason political parties were allowed to form in the first place, to conveniently sort political ideas and to show a candidate’s opinions on different issues without having to think too much about it as a voter.  When George Washington gave his Farewell Address, he warned against the danger of political parties, as they act as a divider in society and allow for outside factors to influence American politics.  Not even a year later, Thomas Jefferson associated with the Democratic-Republicans and John Adams associated with the Federalists (“The History…“).  To this day, prominence of political parties and their influence is made even more clear in the two-party system.  

Another major factor that enforces the restriction of voters to express their opinions is the role the Supreme Court has in setting precedents that affect the election and campaign process.  In terms of establishing the policy for campaign finances and, indirectly, elections as a whole, the Supreme Court has made major decisions to redefine the way people run for office.  One of these decisions was Citizens United v. FEC.  The case defined the role corporations, social welfare groups, unions, and other groups could take in elections through independent expenditures.  Before the case, the Federal Election Commission had control over “the money going into campaigns (contributions); it regulated the money coming out of campaigns (expenditures); and it required all of this to be reported to the government (disclosure).  (13) Recognizing that individuals and groups could benefit candidates indirectly, the drafters of FECA [Federal Election Campaign Act] extended its reach to so-called ‘independent expenditures,’ which are amounts spent by people on their own, independent of a candidate, to promote him or attack his opponent (14)” (Simpson).  However, the Supreme Court decided that corporations, unions, and other large groups were protected by the first amendment and were guaranteed free speech and therefore their spending could not be limited, as it is a form of expression.  The money these groups spend on independent expenditures, or expenditures without any contact with a candidate’s campaign, is used to convince the public to vote for or against a candidate.  The court justified their decision by explaining that “because these funds were not being spent in coordination with a campaign, they ‘do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption’” (Dunbar).  The Court did, however, uphold the part of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 that limited contributions individuals could make to candidates.  The court reasoned that limiting contributions “did not significantly restrict speech because the speaker could simply raise funds from a larger number of contributors.  Although this obviously limited the amounts that individual contributors could donate to a candidate, that was not, as the Court saw it, a significant infringement of First Amendment rights because the contributor was not attempting to speak himself; rather, he was funding the candidate's speech, and the candidate remained free to speak (19)” (Simpson).  Because of these changes to campaign financing, the decision gave rise to political action committees, or PACs and SuperPACs.  To get around the restrictions of hard money, or money directly donated to campaigns, many large groups formed PACs and SuperPACs to raise and spend money to influence the public’s opinion of politicians through advertising while remaining completely separate from the politicians themselves.

Because the decision greatly increased the power of corporations and large groups in politics, there has been a significant backlash against the decision as well.  Four years after the court’s decision “pro-democracy groups renewed their call to amend the Constitution to overturn that decision, which equated money with speech….   other groups have noted, that judicial decree by the most rightwing court in decades has dramatically increased the political power of corporations and CEOs, like the billionaire Koch Brothers, in U.S. elections.  Citizens United has flooded our elections with hundreds of millions in ‘dark money’ that is distorting our democracy” (“Overturn Citizens United”).  PACs and SuperPACs are required to disclose the names of their donors, but social welfare groups are not, since political spending is not their primary activity.  This money received from undisclosed donors is called dark money.  Americans with a lot of money that want to donate to a candidate without their friends, family, or enemies knowing can donate that money to a social welfare group to remain anonymous.  PACs also have a limit on direct donations to politicians so they sometimes partake in bundling.  This is when one person from a PAC will collect all of the individual donations their members can make, $2800 maximum each, and donate them to a candidate all at once.  This way the PAC is giving the politician a large sum of money at once and the politician will most likely keep their interests in mind.  Similarly, PACs will sometimes form “wolfPACs,” which is when multiple PACs from the same industry or issue group will donate money together to a candidate, again to present a large sum of money to a politician and to gain influence over them (“Contribution Limits”).  Since there is a cap on how much money individuals can give to politicians, they are unable to have the same kind of influence in politics.  Many Americans, rightfully so, are concerned to see these new methods of action for corporations and the wealthy to exercise control over politicians.  The University of Maryland conducted a study on public opinion of the Citizens United decision and “Three-fourths of survey respondents — including 66 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Democrats — back a constitutional amendment outlawing Citizens United.  The study also indicates that most Americans — 88 percent overall — want to reduce the influence large campaign donors wield over lawmakers at a time when a single congressional election may cost tens of millions of dollars” (Balcerzak).  There are two ways to overturn a Supreme Court decision, either the Court overturns itself in a new decision or Congress passes an amendment.  The calls for a new amendment to reverse the impact of Citizens United shows the major changes that have resulted from the decision and the fact that most Americans are against them.  Regardless of party affiliation, a majority of Americans believe that the Citizens United decision gave too much power to corporations and muffled the voice of individuals when it comes to influencing politics and politicians.  

This Supreme Court decision and the current trends of campaign finance tie into the selfish intentions of incumbents to further prevent the rise of “third” party candidates to prominence on a national scale and further restrict the paths of expression of voters.  Since the purpose of PACs is to influence politicians and the things they vote for or against, PACs are more likely to donate a large proportion of their campaign money to incumbents, or politicians already in office.  By giving money to someone already in Congress, the PAC can get more immediate benefits from their donation as opposed to donating to a challenger, or someone trying to unseat an incumbent, where they would have to wait and hope that the challenger won the seat (“PAC Dollars…”).  This provides incumbents with a large monetary advantage over challengers and makes it harder for other candidates to gain seats in office.  

Another reason incumbents have an edge on challengers is their ability to keep campaign war chests.  These large sums of money saved up by incumbents can act as a barrier to challengers since war chests show “commitment to spend heavily if challenged.  Specifically, war chests may either represent excess capacity in financing a campaign or serve as a signal of non-observable incumbent characteristics that define a formidable opponent” (Hersch and McDougall).  This works together with the fact that PACs are more likely to donate more money to incumbents than challengers to make incumbency the largest predicting factor in if a politician will win a congressional election.  Politicians can also form leadership PACs where they raise money to promote the reelection of other members of Congress.  Because of these aspects of campaign financing, incumbents have the financial upper-hand, as well as name recognition, to ensure their permanent advantage over challengers.  

The question remains, why won’t an amendment overturning the Citizens United decision pass in Congress?  This is where the selfish intentions of politicians come into play again.  The current status quo in the realm of campaign finances benefits incumbents and makes it easier for them to keep their jobs and raise money.  If they’re the ones who benefit from the current system, why would they want to change it?  This motivation also works to keep “third” party candidates out of office.  In the last two decades, there haven’t been more than 2 congressmen in the House of Representatives or the Senate at once.  The number of congressmen in the House of Representatives hasn’t been in the double digits since the 1930s (“Party Divisions…”).  Republican and Democrat challengers have trouble unseating established incumbents of their two parties, but “third” party candidates have an even tougher time with the same task.  Because of straight-ticket voting, when people vote for candidates solely based on their party, “third” parties have a tough time winning seats in Congress.  

Many factors limit the expression of voters, but they all tie back to the two-party system and its reinforcement.  The formation of two opposing groups from the very beginning of American history, the Federalists in support of the Constitution and the Anti-Federalists in opposition, began the tradition of having two major political parties dominating United States politics.  The constant obstacles in the way of “third” party politicians and challengers prove to significantly prevent them from gaining a real foothold in national politics.  The Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case led to the formation of PACs and increased the influence of corporations and other large entities and decreased the influence of individuals.  This allows wealthy Americans to have more of a say in politics than Americans with less money.  The patterns that have emerged as a result of this decision further prevent the rise of “third” parties in America and changes in national politics.  The realm of politics is a complicated one and a lot of things go on behind the scenes that the American public is largely unaware of.  To change the path of American politics and individual expression, there needs to be drastic changes.  Firstly, the winner-takes-all portion of the Electoral College cannot remain in place.  It promotes the mentality among Americans that voting for a “third” party candidate is pointless and “forces” them to pick between the two major-party candidates regardless of whether they fully support their policies.  Secondly, there must be campaign finance reform.  There have been attempts at this in the past, such as the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002, but there were unpredicted loopholes found by PACs and wealthy Americans that still allowed them to have massive influence over politics and continue feeding their money into the political system.  For these changes to take place in the Electoral College and campaign finance reform, action will need to be taken by Congress to pass amendments.  Because of their intentions and desire to maintain power, however, change may not happen for a long time, if ever, and the voices of American individuals will remain stifled.

Work Cited

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