Law experts from across the country condemned the nation’s campaign finance system as “fundamentally flawed” during a panel Friday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
The discussion, part of the First Amendment Election Matters event, highlighted skyrocketing political spending, deadlock at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the growing role of dark money in elections — especially on social media. Panelists agreed the system has failed but split over whether reforms should target donor influence, party funding caps or the FEC’s structure.
“Really only one eternal truth that both the pro-regulation side and the anti-regulation side agree on, and that is that the current system ain’t working,” Benjamin Ginsberg, a visiting fellow from the Hoover Institution said.
Other concerns included the bipartisan deadlock at the FEC’s head, funding caps for candidate and party spending and the influence of small donors vs. political action committees (PACs).
In recent years, campaign spending has increased significantly for federal and state elections. During the Wisconsin Supreme Court election last spring, candidates spent more than $100 million, while in 2023 that total amount spent was $51 million, making both the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history at their time.
Nationally, political fundraising hit $19.2 billion in 2024. More than $1 billion of that came from “dark money” groups, which are not required to disclose donors.
“Dark money is, and continues to be one of the biggest problems of our campaign finance system and of our elections generally,” said Saurav Ghosh, an attorney at the Campaign Legal Center.
Dark money is often spent on ads. While the FEC regulates certain avenues, such as requiring disclaimers on political ads, they haven’t regulated political promotion or sponsored disclaimers for influencers.
In the 2024 presidential election, $1.3 billion — or nearly 70% — of the total spending of dark money groups went towards funding super PACs like the Democrat-led Future Forward PAC, the largest single candidate PAC in America.
Ghosh also warned of a fast-growing, loosely regulated frontier: political spending on social media influencers. The FEC requires disclaimers on traditional ads but has not set rules for paid influencer content. “Influencing is already garnering a tremendous amount of political ad spending,” Ghosh said.
Panelists pointed to the FEC itself as a source of dysfunction. Since 2008, Republican commissioners have frequently voted as a bloc, creating regulatory deadlock. With only two of the six bipartisan commissioner seats filled — four are needed for quorum — the agency cannot take substantive action on regulatory issues.
The problem has worsened in recent years, with President Donald Trump pressuring former Commissioner Ellen Weintraub to leave the position, leading to other commissioners resigning in protest.
Split issues
Every panelist agreed the FEC’s current system was flawed, but few saw eye-to-eye on what changes should look like or what reforms are most urgent.
While Ghosh and the other panelists agreed the FEC was a "wildly ineffective regulator,” they were largely split between funding caps for campaigns, small donor versus PAC funding and a bipartisan quorum as the three largest issues the FEC needed to address.
Ginsberg argued that outdated limits on party spending leave political parties weaker than super PACs and outside groups. Federal law caps party contributions to state candidates at $62,000, which he said “hasn’t kept pace with modern campaigns at all.”
In the past year alone, more than four times the amount of money has been raised by PACs than individual candidates.
According to Ginsberg, spending caps are “hobbling” parties that are meant to integrate “different factions,” such as PACs, individual donors and political interest groups.
The split between small donor and PAC-based funding was a contentious point for panelist Raymond La Raja. He believes that by relying on individual donations, candidates would be beholden to the “political extremes” of those individuals.
“Small donors are not representative of the broader electorate. Research shows that they are disproportionately older, wealthier, whiter and more educated than the average American,” La Raja said. “And more importantly, they are more partisan and more ideological."
La Raja cited data showing Trump, U.S Senator Bernie Sanders and U.S Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene as candidates who draw high percentages of small donors in America, while being what he called “polarizing” candidates.
Contrary to La Raja’s view, data has shown independent and small donors often have indistinguishable donation patterns when compared to their larger counterparts, while also contributing less overall than private, big-money donors.
While experts disagree on the impact of donor money, the political turmoil endemic to the FEC’s regulations was obvious to all the panelists.
“This is a system that was flawed from the very beginning. It has not worked for 50 years,” Ginsberg said.
