Bangladesh News

The historic 2008 US presidential race has triggered widespread debate over poll expenditure of the contenders for White House, as the existing presidential public financing system for electoral campaign has apparently failed to arrest unbridled campaign spending.

Election experts are arguing that the system is largely flawed and it must be revised to limit the influence of money on elections.

The debate has begun as this year’s presidential election witnessed unprecedented expenditure in the American election history.

The nominees of two major parties, Democratic candidate Barack Obama and his Republican rival John McCain have so far spent one billion dollars in their election campaign, which might have written the epitaph for the current public poll financing system.

According to statistics available and published here in different newspapers, Obama raised campaign fund of around 600 million dollars and McCain 350 million dollars.

Given the unprecedented amount of money for poll expenditure, Monica Prasad, assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, and Traci Burch, assistant professor of political science at Harvard University, said money has played an ever significant role in organising the election campaigns, while election experts termed the race ‘a game of money’ which has emerged as a ‘major obstacle to a free and fair election’.

The public financing system for presidential campaign was introduced in the 1970s after the Watergate scandal to limit the influence of money on politics.

Initially the amount was 20 million dollars for a presidential candidate, but now it stands at 84 million dollars due to inflationary adjustment, which nonetheless has failed to keep pace with the escalating spending.

The 2004 race marked the first time when both major party nominees, John Kerry and President Bush, decided to bypass the federal matching funds for the primary.

Following suit, Obama became the first major party candidate to opt out of the public financing system. The move allowed him to continue raising unlimited private donations while McCain could not, since he opted for the 84 million dollar in public financing.

A recent Gallup Poll found most Americans did not even know who was taking public finance and who was not. But the survey also found, most of the people polled supported limits on campaign spending to control influence of money on politics.

“The public financing system is flawed and it must be revised,” said Kenneth Janda, Payson S Wild professor emeritus at Northwestern University, on Monday while talking to a group of foreign journalists.

Asked by this correspondent, Langdon D Neal, chairman of the Board of Election Commissioners in Chicago, said, “We need to debate the issue whether there is any need for new regulations on election financing.”

Neal was speaking to this correspondent immediately after giving a short briefing to the journalists in a hotel of Chicago on Monday.

He however did not agree that the existing public financing system to limit influence of money on politics has failed.

Neal, also a Democrat, thinks Obama has not spent much money in his election campaign. He however agreed that the US electoral process is very complicated and confusing, and the federal government should look into the matter.

On the other hand, Democrats, in particular who have traditionally supported limits on campaign spending, are grappling with whether they can embrace Obama’s example without being seen as hypocritical, said political commentator Michael Luo in an article published in The New York Times on Monday.

People who have been advocating for tighter restrictions on campaign financing said they were poised to aggressively lobby for changes in the public financing system, and they hope the issue will be taken up quickly by the new president and congress.

They are also seeking new incentives for participating in the public finance system including substantial increase in the amount of public money available to candidates.

They said the latest presidential campaign highlighted new issues like mega donors who join fund raising committees benefiting the candidates and the parties.

There are also questions about whether Internet donations are being vetted adequately, which has drawn increased scrutiny in recent weeks with regard to contributions to Obama campaign.

“Whether we get to move this meaningful campaign reform forward is going to depend largely on the leadership of either Obama or McCain,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, a watchdog group.

Kimberly Castle, a student activist of Northwestern University who has been working to build voter awareness, said success of a candidate’s election campaign now depends on how much he or she is spending to reach the huge number of voters.

According to Prof Janda, who said he would vote for Obama, middle class people contributed a lot to raise the humongous election fund for Obama.

He said 42 percent of Obama’s election fund came from people who had donated less than 200 dollars each while during the primary only 17 percent of McCain’s fund had come from such small donors.

It means the Democratic nominee enjoyed the support of the middle class and the poor, more than McCain did.

According to election experts, young voters identify with Obama, who is 47 and proclaims himself a post-partisan politician.

His mantra of change promises politics of a new generation, new policies, and a new way of governing.

There are about 90 million people in the millennial generation, born in the 1980s and ’90s, and since real incomes for the generation have declined by more than 10 percent over the last 30 years, they want a government that will invest in education and healthcare, expand the economy, and foster growth of good jobs.