Campaign Finance

A dollar from a donor can reach a candidate through four different channels, and each one has different rules. Give directly to a campaign, and federal law caps you at $3,300 per election, with primary and general counted separately. Give to a national party committee, and the cap is higher. Give to a traditional PAC, and the PAC itself can donate to candidates, but only up to its own limit. Give to a super PAC, and there's no cap at all, because that money legally cannot be coordinated with any campaign. The logic: direct contributions can look like a quid pro quo, so they're capped. Independent spending is treated as speech, protected and uncapped.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also called McCain-Feingold, targeted a specific leak: soft money, which was unlimited cash flowing to political parties for supposedly party-building activities that often amounted to campaign help. The law banned national parties from raising or spending soft money and restricted certain issue ads close to elections. It didn't touch independent spending by outside groups, and that gap grew larger after Citizens United v. FEC in 2010 let corporations and unions spend unlimited money independently, which is how super PACs took off.

Dark money sits beside this system without breaking it. Nonprofits organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code can spend on politics without disclosing their donors, because their primary purpose is officially something other than campaigning. That's a disclosure gap, not a contribution violation. Nothing about hiding a donor's identity exceeds a legal cap, which is exactly why reformers call it a loophole rather than a crime.