What Is Public Financing How Small Dollar Democracy Combats Big Money

Leo Migdal

-Dec 12, 2025, 9:39 PM

what is public financing how small dollar democracy combats big money

There is a growing disconnect between elected officials and the majority of people they represent. Part of the blame lies with a campaign finance system that unfairly stacks the deck in favor of the few donors able to give large contributions. Citizens United and other court rulings ended decades of commonsense campaign finance laws. Now a handful of wealthy special interests dominate political funding, often through super PACs and shadowy nonprofits that shield donors’ identities. Brennan Center for Justice has pioneered the most effective and promising solution to the problem of big money in politics: small donor public financing, a system in which public funds match and multiply small... New York City’s multiple match system, in which a $50 donation generates a total of $350 for the candidate, has helped reduce the influence of special interests and empower average voters, and the idea...

It’s easy to see why. Small donor public financing incentivizes candidates to seek out many supporters, not just a few big donors. It enables more candidates from diverse backgrounds to run and it amplifies the voices of regular people. Designed right, small donor public financing also permits candidates to raise and spend what they need to compete in the super PAC era, should they choose to opt in. And, because it doesn’t restrict political spending, it stands up to the current Supreme Court’s requirements. Other approaches to public campaign financing include voucher systems, where citizens receive certain amounts in public funds they can direct to their preferred candidates.

Tax credits for small campaign donations are another way to encourage more people to participate. Small donor public financing increases the diversity of political donors and brings us closer to a democracy where everyone participates. Local political watchers have been surprised by the surge in the cost of political campaigns in the Bay Area, in which millions of dollars are raised (and spent) even for small, district-wide races. Concerned that these large numbers end up privileging special interests and candidates with deep pocket donors, many are looking to public financing of campaigns to provide more balance and representation. Aaron McKean writes for the Campaign Legal Center. Wealthy special interests have increasingly dominated the financing of our elections, threatening to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.

Running an electoral campaign for public office can come with an exorbitant cost, which helps explain why megadonors — or the outside groups they bankroll — routinely end up footing the bill and, in... This cozy relationship between candidates and big spenders drives a wedge between elected officials and their constituents, making officials less accountable to the people they represent. A campaign finance system that encourages candidates for office to appeal primarily to wealthy special interests is fundamentally detached from our democratic ideals. Public financing refers to government programs that provide limited public funds to candidates for campaign expenses. The first comprehensive public financing programs in the United States were established in the wake of the 1972 Watergate corruption scandal, in response to public pressure for more transparent financing for presidential elections. The presidential public funding program represented a powerful tool to combat corruption and expand small-donor participation.

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Methodologically, Fouirnaies has an interest in causal inference and applied econometrics. Most of his projects use natural experiments to uncover causal relations between political and economic variables. Before joining Harris, Fouirnaies was a Prize-Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University. He earned his PhD at the London School of Economics. It is difficult to study the consequences of public-funding programs because of the small number of cases, the problem of establishing good counterfactuals, and limited data availability. The most compelling evidence suggests that full public-funding programs promote electoral competition and benefit challengers.

Some evidence suggests that public funding may help ideological extremists and exacerbate political polarization. Evidence suggests that public funding may allow politicians to spend less time on fundraising activities. Over the years, small donor public financing has emerged as the most powerful antidote to the outsize influence of megadonors in our elections. By enabling and incentivizing candidates to rely on support from constituents rather than wealthy donors, public financing gives everyday Americans a greater say in their elections and government. And as more state and local governments enact new programs or strengthen existing ones, evidence of their benefits continues to grow. More and more money floods our elections every year, due mostly to the Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 ruling in Citizens United v.

Federal Election Commission. By allowing corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited money on elections, the Court largely deregulated money in politics and supercharged the influence of wealthy donors and special interests. Since then, just a handful of megadonors have spent enormous sums to gain access to politicians, influence voters, and push their own narrow agendas. In the 2022 midterms, millions of small donors together gave a record-breaking amount to congressional campaigns, but our analysis found just 100 big donors outspent these millions of Americans by 60 percent. Further, people from underrepresented communities without access to wealthy networks are often unable to pay the high price of running for office, while those with backing from megadonors can run even with extremist platforms. With no alternative to traditional fundraising, politicians have every incentive to court wealthy donors and prioritize their needs.

This imbalance undermines representative democracy and leaves everyday Americans feeling unheard. Public financing programs — which are all optional — give candidates who can demonstrate sufficient community support an alternative to fundraising from wealthy donors or special interests. Small donor match systems use public funds to match low-dollar contributions from state or local residents to participating candidates. These programs help candidates build broad bases of support, allow elected officials to spend more time connecting with their constituents, and amplify the voices of everyday voters. The financing of electoral campaigns in the United States happens at the federal, state, and local levels by contributions from individuals, corporations, political action committees, and sometimes the government. Campaign spending has risen steadily at least since 1990.

For example, a candidate who won an election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 spent on average $407,600 ($980,896 in .mw-parser-output .tooltip-dotted{border-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help}2024) while the winner in 2022 spent on average $2.79 million ($3.00 million in 2024); in the Senate, average spending for... In 2020, nearly $14 billion was spent on federal election campaigns in the United States — "making it the most expensive campaign in U.S. history",[2] "more than double" what was spent in the 2016 election.[3] Critics assert that following a number of Supreme Court decisions — Citizens United v. FEC (2010) in particular—the "very wealthy" are now allowed to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns (through Political Action Committees, especially "Super PACs"), and to prevent voters from knowing who is trying to influence them... political campaigns to a degree not seen in decades" and is "drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans."[4]

On December 6, 2024, The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk had donated $277 million to Trump and allied Republicans, making him the single largest individual political donor in the 2024 election and the... Public concern over the influence of large donors in political campaigns was reflected in a 2018 opinion poll which found that 74% of Americans surveyed thought it was "very" important that "people who give... Laws regulating campaign donations, spending and public funding have been enacted at the federal level by the Congress and enforced by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), an independent federal agency. Nonprofit, non-governmental grassroots organizations like the Center for Responsive Politics, Consumer Watchdog and Common Cause track how money is raised and spent.[8] Although most campaign spending is privately financed (largely through donors that work... Eligibility requirements must be fulfilled to qualify for a government subsidy, and those that do accept government funding are usually subject to spending limits on money.

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