Brandon Allen
June 19, 2026 · Newsletter
Following the Money: How to Take Back Campaign Finance
If the first part of this series was about how money and media reshaped American democracy, then this part is about what it actually takes to change it.
Because campaign finance reform is often talked about in slogans. But in practice, it is a system built on legal distinctions, court decisions, loopholes, and enforcement gaps that have developed over decades. And any real solution has to deal with that system as it exists today, not the simpler version we wish still existed.
At the center of it all is the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC. That ruling held that corporations and outside groups can spend unlimited money on political advocacy, as long as they are not directly coordinating with candidates. The legal reasoning focused on speech. The practical outcome focused on scale.
Since that decision, outside spending in federal elections has expanded dramatically, reaching well over $2 billion in recent cycles. That money flows through Super PACs, nonprofit organizations that do not disclose their donors, and layered funding structures that make it difficult for voters to trace where political messages actually originate.
And that is the core issue. Not just how much money is spent, but how much of it is visible.
Because when voters cannot see the source of a message, they are asked to evaluate influence without information. A campaign ad can appear local. A mailer can sound community-driven. A digital campaign can feel organic. But the financial backing behind those messages often comes from a very small number of high-dollar donors operating on a national scale.
That reality doesn’t always show up in obvious ways. It doesn’t require illegal coordination or explicit corruption to change how campaigns behave. It only requires a consistent imbalance in resources. Over time, campaigns adapt to that imbalance. Attention shifts toward donors and outside networks that can fund or influence the broader political environment, and away from the larger base of voters who are ultimately supposed to decide the outcome.
So when we talk about reform, the first question is not how to eliminate political speech. It is how to make political influence visible again.
That starts with transparency, and transparency is often treated as a secondary reform, something that matters only after bigger structural changes. But in reality, it is the foundation on which everything else depends. If voters do not know who is funding political messaging, then no other safeguard works as intended.
That is why proposals like the DISCLOSE Act matter. The goal is straightforward: require organizations that spend significant money to influence federal elections to disclose their donors above a reasonable threshold, and ensure that political advertising clearly identifies its funding sources.
This does not restrict speech. It does not limit participation. It simply answers a basic question that should never be difficult in a democracy: who is trying to influence the outcome of this election?
Right now, the answer is often buried behind legal structures that make accountability difficult by design. And that lack of clarity is not a small technical problem. It shapes how voters interpret nearly every political message they see.
But transparency alone is not enough. It tells voters who is influencing politics, but it does not change who has the power to influence it in the first place.
That is where small-dollar empowerment comes in.
For decades, campaign finance systems have naturally drifted toward large donors because large donations are efficient. They take less time to raise, require fewer relationships, and provide immediate financial impact. But that efficiency comes at a cost. It concentrates influence in the hands of a small number of actors and creates incentives that pull campaigns toward those networks.
A different system would reverse that incentive.
Public matching systems for small-dollar donations are one approach. Under these models, contributions under a certain amount are matched multiple times using public funds, increasing the value of grassroots support and making it possible for candidates to compete without relying on large donors as their primary funding source.
Another approach is a Democracy Voucher system, where every voter receives a small publicly funded contribution they can assign to candidates of their choice. That model changes the structure of participation itself. Instead of fundraising being driven by wealth concentration, it becomes distributed across the entire electorate.
The goal in both cases is not to eliminate large donors. It is to prevent them from being the dominant gatekeepers of political viability.
But even with transparency and small-dollar reforms, the system still has another structural problem: the gap between how the law is written and how it operates in practice.
Super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating with candidates. Yet in reality, coordination is often defined so narrowly that campaigns and outside groups can operate in parallel with aligned messaging, shared strategy signals, and overlapping personnel networks without triggering violations.
That creates a system where independence exists in legal language, but alignment exists in practice. And when that happens, enforcement becomes less about clear rules and more about interpreting intent in a highly complex environment.
Closing that gap requires stronger definitions of coordination and clearer enforcement standards. If an outside group is consistently acting in ways that mirror campaign strategy, then the law has to reflect that reality instead of ignoring it.
There is also a broader layer to this discussion that often gets less attention: corporate political activity.
Publicly traded companies can engage in political spending through multiple channels, including direct contributions, trade associations, and nonprofit structures that obscure the source of funds. In many cases, shareholders are not given meaningful input into how corporate resources are used in political contexts.
A more accountable system would require clear disclosure of all political spending and ensure that shareholders have a role in approving major political expenditures. This is not about limiting corporate speech. It is about aligning political activity with ownership accountability.
All of these reforms exist within constitutional constraints, and that matters. Some changes, like disclosure requirements and public financing systems, are well established under existing Supreme Court precedent. Others, like reversing the core structure created by Citizens United, would require a constitutional amendment.
That distinction is important because it reflects the reality of reform. Some changes can be made immediately. Others require long-term political alignment. But both can be pursued at the same time.
And in Indiana’s 3rd District, that matters in very real terms. Voters already see how outside money shows up in campaigns, how messaging floods into races from organizations that are not clearly identified, and how elections can sometimes feel shaped by forces that are distant from local communities.
The frustration that comes with that is not abstract. It is practical. It is about whether people feel like they have equal standing in the political process.
Because at its core, campaign finance reform is not just about money. It is about trust. It is about whether voters believe their voice carries weight that is comparable to the largest financial actors in the system.
If that trust continues to erode, then no amount of messaging, campaigning, or policy detail can fully repair the gap between voters and the system that represents them.
In the next and final part of this series, we will turn to the information side of that equation. How media structure, algorithmic platforms, and the loss of shared civic space shape what voters believe before they ever make their decision at the ballot box.
Paid For and Authorized by Kelly Thompson For Congress