New tool analyzes potential impact of campaign finance laws to encourage small donors
The Campaign Finance Institute released a new tool that lets citizens and policy makers in all 50 states see how a variety of policy options could alter the relative importance of small donors in state legislative and gubernatorial elections.
Each state has two charts, the first showing where candidates raised their campaign money in recent elections and the second allows users to choose policy options and see how the distributions would be affected.
Policy options include contribution limits, public matching funds and what it would be like if new donors were persuaded to donate. According to the CFI, the percentage of money given to candidates from a state’s population ranged from one to five percent. The formula used in the tool assumes each donor gives exactly $50 and the donors themselves are divided half and half between gubernatorial and state legislative candidates.
Users are given the option to make “no change” to see what each combination of changes would offer.
Check out CFI’s reports for Midwest Democracy Network states:
Unleash your “citizen policy analyst” and use the tool in the rest of the states here.
For more CFI research on small donors, go here.
