Campaign Finance Complexity : Before Campaigning Retain an Attorney

This book examines the campaign finance system, which affects decisions of individuals to run for office. Candidates incur increased costs learning and complying with regulations, which create a drag on candidacy participation. This has important implications for candidacy decisions, regulatory systems, and campaign finance reforms.

The campaign finance system regulates campaign contributions and behavior with the intent to eliminate corruption or the potential for corruption in elections. With that goal in mind, state legislators created statutes regulating campaign behavior. Each state has wide variation in the complexity of campaign finance regulations. Regulatory systems create a network of rules and regulations and campaign finance is no different. The difference is in the behavior regulated and the potential negative impacts of a complex regulatory system. Candidates running for office must take time and effort to learn and comply with campaign finance regulations to compete in an election. If campaign finance regulations are complex, the time and effort required to learn and comply increases and has the potential to take candidates away from campaigning. This book studies whether states with complex regulations have fewer candidates running for office or more candidates withdrawing their candidacy after starting a campaign. This potentially negative consequence of campaign regulations impacts participation rates for individuals running for office. In a democracy, we desire more candidates in order to maintain a diverse candidate pool, but a complex regulatory system may adversely affect that goal by increasing candidate costs.