The study finds that an absence of any campaign contribution limits or public financing, limited disclosure, and poor enforcement of existing campaign finance laws are pushing campaign costs through the roof and fueling a pay-to-play culture that threatens to undermine public confidence in state and local government.When it comes to campaign finance laws, the devil really is in the details, which can rapidly render even the best-intentioned reforms meaningless. That said, I can't imagine that any one of the Democrats now vying for their party's presidential nomination would be so corrupt as to appoint a former mining industry lobbyist as deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior, as George Bush did, with the predictable and enraging result that "The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal."“Illinois has long been proud of its brass-knuckles, results-oriented political culture. Reform for its own sake has never been a fashion. Yet a look at Illinois’s campaign finance laws, in the context of the rest of the Midwest and the rest of the country, is sobering,” said Suzanne Novak, Deputy Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center and the lead author of the report.
“Illinois is one of the only places in America where literally anyone can walk in the door and spend whatever they want to influence the outcome of an election. The system is almost an open invitation to corruption,” said Novak....
“Illinois has chosen to forgo almost any regulation of campaign money in the hope that full disclosure will create enough incentive for politicians and special interests to avoid ethical impropriety. Unfortunately, the disclosure system is so riddled with loopholes that tens of thousands of dollars can move from lobbyists to politicians without attracting any public notice,” continued Novak.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
