Fishbowl: Nomination And Election Process Analysis

Fishbowl: Nomination & Election Process
Elections enable voters to select leaders and to hold them accountable for their performance in office. Where the electoral process is competitive and forces candidates or parties to expose their records and future intentions to popular scrutiny, elections serve as forums for the discussion of public issues and facilitate the expression of public opinion. Elections also provide political education for citizens and ensure the responsiveness of democratic governments to the will of the people. They also serve to legitimize the acts of those who wield power, a function that is performed to some extent even by elections that are noncompetitive.
In a caucus, voting is conducted at local party meetings and
They are designed to act as a check on ideologically extreme or inexperienced candidates. It also gives power to people who have a vested interested in party policies: elected leaders. Because the primary and caucus voters do not have to be active members of the party (in New Hampshire they can sign up and sign out going-and-coming at the polls), the super-delegate system has been called a safety-value.
Some functions that parties perform are, they help elected leaders gather support and power. They’re stable coalitions that work between elections, as well as during them. Parties promote stability and act to moderate public opinion due to their pragmatic drive to win elections. Parties provide linkages among branches of government. They allow the often disparate parts of our political system to work together. Because parties must win national elections, they can also function as unifiers of the counter. They damper sectionalism and give people in remote parts of the country something in common with the
corporations and unions provided unprecedented amounts of soft-money contributions during the 1996 and 2000 election cycles. At the same time, the Federal Election Commission had its budget cut, making the commission virtually helpless to prevent the parties from skirting existing campaign finance laws. In light of the impact soft money made on elections, reformers believed soft money must either be eliminated or severely limited. The McCain-Feingold legislation imposed a soft money ban on all federal elections. It also limited the amount of soft money contributors may give to state, district, and local committees. The ban on soft money was one of the highlights in the legislation, but it was expected to come under attack in light of Buckley v. Valeo. Critics of the soft-money ban argue that the contribution of money to political parties is a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment. In December 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of these limits by a vote of 5–4. The McCain-Feingold legislation actually increased the amount of "hard" money that individuals and other supporters could contribute. The amount of money individuals might contribute to state parties in federal elections increased from $5000 to $10,000. The total amount these individuals might contribute to federal candidates, parties, and other organizations increased from $25,000 to