Being the year 2001 candidates now have more options available to them to make themselves known. The only problem is, all these new methods (television, radio, the Internet) cost money to use. This immediately brings up two problems. The first being that the candidate with the most funds has a great advantage to winning just based on their ability to gain

Candidates receive money is two forms; soft money and hard money. Soft money is money that is contributed to a state of local party for party-building purposes that does not have to be disclosed under federal law, this means a candidate and rake up a large amount of money and never have to be held accountable for it. Hard money on the other hand is regulated and must be disclosed to the government under federal law. The problem here does not lie in the hard money situations, but rather the soft money. Since hard money is accounted for and regulated it is rather hard (and illegal) to appropriate it in the wrong ways. Hard money, if evenly granted, is a delightful boost to either party and causes no harm to the election (if used justly and legally). Soft money is the culprit of undermining elections. Since it is not legally required to disclose the money before the government, there is no regulation on how much a candidate can receive and this can lead to problems. This amount of soft money given to a candidate or party can be at price. Often candidate and parties receive this soft money from large corporations and this is translated into big bucks, sometimes hundreds of thousands or more! This money not only makes the battle unfair due to the vastly unequal levels at which the two candidates stand but it can also affect the public in ways that are often overlooked. For example, in 1998 Senate Republican leader Lott and National Republican Senatorial Committee head Mitch McConnell called the meetings and organized the votes to kill Senator John McCain's legislation to control the use of tobacco. The use of tobacco is growing (especially with teens) and is without a doubt detrimental to the health of anyone who uses it. The republicans voted against McCain's proposal due to some soft money that the Republican Party received from large tobacco companies. So basically what it comes down to is that the Republicans put the health of America (and its youth) in jeopardy in return for some "hush money." Something just seems so uncouth about this situation and this happens all the time.

Public financing is the last facet of campaign finance that should (although it is difficult) be reformed. Public financing is a procedure by which the United States government draws from its personal funds as well as from the taxpayer's pocket to support candidates and parties. A question of equal funding is raised immediately. It would be unfair to take a Republican citizen's money and hand it over to the Democratic Party, but if the money taken was equally distributed this would cease to be a problem. Besides obstacles in Congress (which most can be easily remedied by loopholes) the other great problem facing public financing is public cynicism powered by soft money. The public citizen believes that the health of our democracy cannot be fully restored until large, private contributions are removed from pol

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1975
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)