Restoring Public Trust in Elections: An Empirical Study of How Campaign Finance Reform Can Restore Public Trust in Elections

Authors

Matthew D. Kim

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The American public has become deeply distrustful of elections. This distrust is partly due to Supreme Court decisions curtailing campaign finance restrictions, on First Amendment grounds, to spending that creates an appearance of quid pro quo corruption. The Court’s reasoning assumes that, although the government has an interest in protecting the public’s trust in elections, campaign spending does not pose a threat to the public’s trust absent the appearance of quid pro quo corruption. However, it is unclear if campaign spending undermines the public’s trust in elections through means other than the appearance of quid pro quo corruption. If it does, the Court’s narrow focus on quid pro quo corruption as the only mechanism through which campaign spending can undermine public trust would be unfounded and paradoxically reduce public trust in elections. Rather than accepting, at face value, the Court’s assumption that quid pro quo corruption is the only mechanism through which campaign spending can reduce public trust and solely focusing on whether campaign spending decreases public trust in elections through quid pro quo corruption, this Article tests the Court’s assumption.

The Article analyzes four original survey experiments involving 1,974 respondents and provides new empirical evidence that, even in the absence of quid pro quo corruption, campaign spending consistently undermines public trust in elections by creating concerns among members of the public about unequal access to voters, outsized influence over elections, dissemination of misinformation, and inefficiency. What’s more, this Article provides empirical evidence that campaign spending may reduce public willingness to vote in and contribute to elections, even in the absence of quid pro quo corruption. Given the demonstrated loss of public trust and reduced willingness to participate in elections, this Article argues that the Court should return to the original, underlying reason motivating its campaign finance jurisprudence—namely, the government’s compelling interest in protecting the public’s trust in elections—rather than focusing on the derivative goal of preventing the appearance of quid pro quo corruption. Doing so will allow campaign finance regulations to better safeguard American elections.

DOI

10.37419/LR.V12.I3.4

First Page

1101

Last Page

1184

Recommended Citation

Matthew D. Kim, Restoring Public Trust in Elections: An Empirical Study of How Campaign Finance Reform Can Restore Public Trust in Elections, 12 Tex. A&M L. Rev. 1101 (2025).
Available at: https://doi.org/10.37419/LR.V12.I3.4