CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Fuller, Brady |
|---|---|
| Title | Campaign Finance Reform: A Comparative Look at the Idaho and Oregon State Senate Elections After the Implementation of the 1997 Idaho Campaign Contribution Limit Law |
| Summary | Political elections in the United States, at the federal, state and local level, are all heavily influenced by campaign contributions from individual donors, as well as non-individual donors like corporations, political parties and political action committees (PACs). American policymakers have debated for over a century how to balance restricting large donations from corrupting elections while also protecting the first amendment right to free speech. Many laws regarding this issue first appear at the federal level in Congressional bills and Supreme Court hearings, and this sets the foundation for states to adopt their own policies. Idaho state passed its campaign contribution law in 1997 to restrict the amount that both individual and non-individual donors could donate to state campaigns, while neighboring Oregon state has set zero restrictions on campaign contributions to state and local elections. In order to see if Idaho’s law has prevented big money from infiltrating state politics, this research does a comparative analysis of the two states to evaluate the donations going to Oregon candidates versus Idaho candidates, and if that number has increased over the last 25 years since this law was implemented. The results show that Oregon has significantly more donations over $1,000 coming from non-individual donors and that Oregon contributions in general have a significantly higher total value than Idaho contributions. |
| Supervisor | Fazekas, Mihaly |
| Department | Public Policy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/fuller_brady.pdf |
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