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Recent scandals, including questionable fund-raising tactics by the current administration, have brought campaign finance reform into the forefront of the news and the public consciousness. Dollars and Votes goes beyond the partial, often misleading, news stories and official records to explain how ...

Recent scandals, including questionable fund-raising tactics by the current administration, have brought campaign finance reform into the forefront of the news and the public consciousness. Dollars and Votes goes beyond the partial, often misleading, news stories and official records to explain how our campaign system operates. The authors conducted thorough interviews with corporate "government relations" officials about what they do and why they do it. The results provide some of the most damning evidence imaginable.

What donors, especially business donors, expect for their money is "access" and access means a lot more than a chance to meet and talk. They count on secret behind-the-scenes deals, like a tax provision that applies only to a "corporation incorporated on June 13, 1917, which has its principal place of business in Bartlesville, Oklahoma". After a deal is worked out behind closed doors, one executive explains, "it doesn't much matter how people vote afterwards".

Ordinary contributions give access to Congress; megabuck "soft money" contributions ensure access to the President and top leaders. The striking truth revealed by these authors is that half the soft money comes from fewer than five hundred big donors, and that most contributions come, directly or indirectly, from business. Reform is possible, they argue, by turning away from the temptation of looking at specific scandals and developing a new system that removes the influence of big money campaign contributors.

"A wonderful, timely, and accessible book about one of the most pressing public questions of our time: the issue of campaign finance reform. Bedeviling our nation's political community for more than twenty-five years, the dispute over how best to regulate political campaign funding--and hence ...

"A wonderful, timely, and accessible book about one of the most pressing public questions of our time: the issue of campaign finance reform. Bedeviling our nation's political community for more than twenty-five years, the dispute over how best to regulate political campaign funding--and hence political campaign speech--has pitted free speech advocates against good government reformers, Democrats against Republicans, and courts against legislatures. Bradley Smith's highly readable book navigates all of these crosscurrents in a balanced way that informs the reader of the basic elements of the debates, while deftly skewering the key components of the conventional wisdom by arguing for the elimination of laws limiting campaign funding."--Joel Gora, Brooklyn Law School

"To date no one has written a sustained, book-length argument for the deregulation of campaign financing. Bradley Smith's "Unfree Speech is a welcome step in filling that gap. He addresses numerous important themes, including the inroads on freedom of speech caused by campaign finance regulation, the tendency of reformers to exaggerate the harms of campaign finance and to seek increasing restrictions on speech, and the tendency for the burden of regulation to fall most heavily on everyday citizens."--Daniel Lowenstein, UCLA