by Dan Mayer, Legal Fellow at Public Citizen’s Democracy Is For People Campaign, which is working towards a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United v. FEC and limiting the influence of corporations and money in elections.
Six billion dollars. That’s just the reported amount spent to elect or defeat the entire slate of federal candidates in the 2012 cycle.
To be sure, some of the biggest players in the super PAC game weren’t very efficient about how they used the unlimited contributions they took from their ultra-wealthy individual and corporate patrons. Court rulings in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania put some of the most egregious voter suppression efforts on hold while invigorated civil rights groups worked to turn out every eligible voter they could find. Several prominent candidates suffered “legitimate” humiliation and defeat. And apparently, 47 percent of America wasn’t going to vote for Mitt Romney anyway (or so we hear).
Does any of that mean that money doesn’t matter, that the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission era is over as quickly as it began? Don’t bet your democracy on it.
The Obama campaign outspent the Romney campaign, $549 million to $336 million. The national party committees were close in fundraising (a mere $50 million GOP advantage), but Democrats actually outspent Republicans $814 to $776 million. Outside groups, some disclosing their donors, some not, favored conservatives by $855 million to $406 million in “independent” spending. For all that, in the first full-scale conflagration since Citizen United, the great powers basically fought to a draw, barely moving the lines in Congress.
cloaked the intentions in language about protecting the integrity of the vote. But a closer examination of the actions taken by those lawmakers – limiting early voting hours, clamping down on voter registration drives and implementing onerous voter ID requirements – revealed political efforts to keep certain people away from the polls, namely minorities, college students, low-income people and the elderly. See the 
redrawing districts to favor their side. Gerrymandering gave them a built-in advantage of 1.25 percent of vote margin even before a single vote is cast. Incumbency also has its advantages, which is good for another 1.25 percent ….”
n 2012, President Obama conducted campaign events in just eight states, and Governor Romney did so in only ten. Just ten states received 98 percent of the $940 million spent on advertising by the two campaigns and their supporters.
nd of district drawing following the 2010 census, have the parties finally taken it too far? Now that the 2012 election results are in, for the most part, we can see the effect of partisan redistricting on the composition of the House. While that effect probably wasn’t enough to shift control of the House to the Democrats, it was enough to heavily dilute Democratic voters in several key states.