As a platform ActiveGiver is committed to educating and empowering its users. Have a cause you really care about? We will help you voice your concerns through your donation. One of ActiveGiver’s (many) cool features is that you can donate to a cause across many different campaigns. Want more female Republicans in state congresses? You can find that cause on our platform. Donate to the cause and we’ll distribute the funds to the candidates who support it; we’ll also let them know why you donated. But though the efficacy of our donation platform is one of ActiveGiver’s assets, it does raise some questions about the ethics of this kind of political participation. Should you be able to donate to a campaign if the candidate you support doesn’t actually represent you?
Questions about who controls – or should control – American politics are by no means new. If you head back into the annals of American history (dust off that copy of the Federalist Papers from your 9th grade history class) you’ll find the likes of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry duking it out about how to avoid overwhelming influence from foreign countries, whether to give more power to states or to the central government, and who needs the most protection from oppression. Which is worse, the tyranny of the majority, or the tyranny of a few powerful factions? Either way, the founding fathers’ concern about sovereignty still lies at the core of the American identity. The prospect of outside influences determining the outcome of a political campaign, even if it’s just a few states over, might therefore leave some people with a sour taste in their mouths.
But whether we like it or not, American elections, in reality, are already heavily influenced by individuals and organizations outside of candidates’ districts. Let’s look at an example. In 2014 the most expensive midterm race was the race between Mitch McConnell and Alison Grimes for Kentucky Senate. Over 54 million dollars was spent on this election. McConnell, the incumbent, raised 30 million, and Grimes raised 18 million, each for their individual campaigns. Of those millions of dollars, 4 percent of McConnell’s donations were small (under $200), in comparison to Grimes’ 35 percent. Both candidates raised 57% of their funds from large contributions ($200 to $2700). But McConnell managed to raise 21 percent of his funds from PACs, as opposed to Grimes’ 4 percent. What does that mean? Well, you might look at the ratio of funds and conclude that Grimes had more grassroots support, because she received much of her campaign funding from small donors. As opposed to McConnell, who raised over 1/5th of his funds from PACs, which could have come from anywhere. But if you look at the in state versus out-of-state donors, the profiles of both candidates are extremely similar. McConnell and Grimes both raised less than 1/3 of their funds from within their own state (McConnell’s percentage was 22 to Grimes’ 28). McConnell raised 78 percent of his and Grimes raised 72 percent of her campaign funds from out of state.2 Were special interest groups fighting a proxy war through the Kentucky senate seat? It’s possible. And that doesn’t even account for funds spent by Super PACs entirely independent of the campaigns themselves. Almost 35 million dollars was spent either in support of or opposed to both candidates by outside PACs, many of whom had anonymous donors.
So what does it all mean? As it is, millions of dollars are being spent annually to elect or to block the election of candidates across the country. Are we being oppressed by the deep pockets of specific factions, as some of our founding fathers feared? Or is the increased nationalization of American politics and political campaigns enabling citizens to shape a more accurately represented American polity? At ActiveGiver our inspiration is to give a voice to the people – to empower citizens to shape the best America we possibly can. Whether or not we succeed in that is yet to be determined. If there is one thing for sure, though it’s that this debate about the best way to carry out representative democracy is at the heart of what it means to be American; and an active giver.
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