Our presidential elections cost us billions in dollars—and they can cost even more in terms of their impact on our civic culture and understanding of issues. But it isn’t always easy to identify exactly how money shapes our politics. How exactly do campaign dollars affect our lives, our laws, and our American democracy? What can we do about the fact that more and more money in our elections is coming from fewer and fewer very wealthy people? Richard L. Hasen, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine and author of Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections, visits Zócalo to explain how U.S. elections came to be dominated by money, and what citizens might do to help reform our politics.
Photo courtesy of Aqua.
The Takeaway
Money Isn’t Corrupting American Politics
But Loose Campaign Finance Laws Are Even More Dangerous and Subtle Than We Think, Says Legal Scholar Richard L. Hasen
Money alone can’t win an election—but that doesn’t mean it’s not a huge problem in American politics. That was the main message of Zócalo’s first event of 2016, a talk …