Freedom in the 50 States

Citizens should have the right to express and promote their political opinions in a democracy, including their support for or opposition to candidates for office. By regulating contributions to parties and candidates, governments effectively limit citizens’ ability to spread their ideas.

The campaign finance policy category covers public financing of campaigns and contribution limits (individuals to candidates, individuals to parties, an index of individuals to political action committees [PACs] and PACs to candidates, and an index of individuals to PACs and PACs to parties). Although these policies receive “constitutional weights” boosting them by a factor of 10 because of their First Amendment implications, they receive low weights even so because little evidence exists that current contribution limits significantly reduce private actors’ involvement in politics, unless the limits are extremely low (and Vermont’s extremely low limits were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006).¹

Also, there is not much money in state elections, even in states without contribution limits. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, in the mid-2010s, individual contributions to state legislative candidates amounted to about $850 million per two-year cycle, or less than $3 per person in the country.² Finally, even being prevented from making, say, a $1,000 donation to a candidate does not result in a $1,000 loss to the frustrated donor because the donor can put those funds to a different use. The freedom index assumes a utility loss equivalent to 10 percent of the planned contribution when calculating victim cost. In sum, the nationwide victim losses from state campaign finance restrictions come to a figure in the tens of millions of dollars a year, at most.