MCCAIN-FEINGOLD AIDS IN DUMBING DOWN OF VOTERS

Saturday, October 18, 2003

I would be opposed to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, miscalled a reform, in any case, because I believe it is unconstitutional to prohibit people from associating for the purpose of expressing their political views.

But it has lamentable practical consequences as well: More ignorant voters.

In a briefing paper distributed by the Cato Institute, ``The Benefits of Campaign Spending,'' John Coleman presents evidence that expensive campaigns do not have the negative consequences often attributed to them. In fact, more money translates into better knowledge of candidates and issues, and does not diminish public trust or citizen involvement.

Coleman, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is also the author of Party Decline in America. He reports on research he did with Paul Manna, of the College of William and Mary, on spending in U.S. House races in 1994 and 1996. They analyzed the statistical relationship between how much was spent by incumbents and challengers in a congressional district and people's responses to survey questions on political involvement and knowledge.

``The argument that citizens are turned off by high-spending campaigns simply does not hold up when those high-spending campaigns are in citizens' own districts,'' Coleman says.

This may be like people's tendency to say American education is terrible but their child's school is great, he says, but in any case, living in a district with high campaign spending ``does not diminish their involvement or attention.''

Of course, high campaign spending tends to happen in races that are really competitive, which may in itself raise voters' level of involvement or attention. If an incumbent is expected to coast to victory with a 70-30 split, who pays attention? Who contributes to a near-certain loser? If reformers really wanted to get ordinary people more engaged in politics, they should have limited gerrymandering, not spending.

One criticism of expensive campaigns is that they leave voters more confused than before. That's not true. The researchers examined whether people knew the candidates' names, could place them on an ideological scale (from ``extremely liberal'' to ``extremely conservative'') or on an issue scale (their positions on abortion, for example, or government spending), and how confident they were in their judgments.

When challengers spent the average amount for challengers in a House race in 1996, about $230,000, 49 percent of survey respondents thought they knew enough to place the candidates on an ideological scale, and 20 percent of them were confident of their placement. In districts where spending rose to $500,000, 66 percent chose a point on the scale and 31 percent were confident; at $1 million, 85 percent chose and 53 percent were confident.

Of course they could be confident but wrong; however, that isn't the case. The researchers made their own determination of incumbents' ideological position, based on their recorded votes (not what they said when campaigning). In the (theoretical) absence of any campaign spending at all by incumbents, about 23 percent of the public would know with moderate accuracy where an incumbent fell on the political scale. If the incumbent spent $1 million, that rose to 49 percent, and at $1.5 million it was 63 percent.

That suggests that success in raising voter turnout would not be an unalloyed good thing, by the way, even though one would hope that the percentages are higher among people who actually vote.

Challenger spending does decrease accuracy about an incumbent, but then challengers want voters to start wondering how much they really know about the person in office. That makes races more competitive.

Another criticism of campaign spending is that it widens the information gap between more and less well-off voters. That isn't so either.

Coleman compared the political knowledge of politically, socially or economically advantaged and disadvantaged groups. In low-spending races, there was a gap, but by the time spending reached about $1.3 million, it had virtually disappeared.

``Low levels of spending lock in inequality of knowledge between groups.''

Coleman says, ``Campaign spending, rather than strengthening and entrenching political inequality, is a democratizing force.''

Other criticisms of expensive campaigns are that they are more likely to ``go negative'' and that negative campaigns turn people off. But, Coleman says, the correlation between spending on negative ads and total spending is small and not statistically significant. Also, though people say they don't like negative ads, there is little indication that they are less involved or less knowledgeable about campaigns that are negative.

Even if the reasons adduced in support of McCain-Feingold were right, it would be a bad law. If many of the reasons are wrong, it is simply preposterous.