political campaigns should not be publicly funded. the way I see it, there's a difference between funding a campaign through grassroots fundraisers and requiring all candidates to receive money through governmental campaigns.

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there are several supreme court cases discussing this, including buckley v. valeo which tackles FECA of 1971 (amended in 1974), mcconnell v. fec which tackles the BCRA of 2002. and everyone's favorite citizens united v. fec which solidified the existence of superPACs

time and time again the supreme court has defined spending as a form of political speech. due to the requirements of running a successful campaign, campaign spending cannot have any blanket restrictions. travel, ad production, event spaces, etc. vary by region.

on top of this, campaigns have to pay their staff, rent for offices, software (NGPVan/ActBlue), polling research, etc. which all start adding up quickly. like everything else, necessary admin costs make things more difficult.

here's how i see it, the prices have gone up excruciatingly to run a federal campaign. the requirements to file ALL spending receipts with the FEC have made it so we can get a better scope of what's driven up the cost. a lot of it ends up being basic admin stuff from my research.

the influence of money in politics ends up being put more in lobbying. a lot of political groups end up building relations with elected officials, and end up putting in Independent Expenditures (they did it on their own accord) to prop up and support candidates

independent expenditures (typically advertisement spending) have to be done at the expense and responsibility of the organization, not a campaign. they can explicitly support a candidate, but no work can be done with the candidate.

anyways thanks for coming to my ted talk