By Alexander Burns
To opponents of campaign finance regulation, the tangled mass of spending rules that remain intact serve to only confuse voters and snarl campaigns in an increasingly arbitrary regulatory maze. They point to a number of states that allow totally unrestricted political giving, like Virginia and Texas, to make the case that a system with fewer limits on giving would at minimum let voters know who’s trying to buy influence.Center for Competitive Politics President David Keating, an opponent of campaign finance restrictions, argued that the most appropriate check on money in politics would be the voters themselves – if they care.“They should raise the contribution limits or take them off altogether. Let the voters decide,” he said. “No candidate is required to accept a $10,000 donation or even a million-dollar donation.”
