Florida’s Campaign Finance laws are no longer doing what they were intended to do when they were passed in the early 1990’s when Lawton Chiles was governor.
Unlimited amounts of cash are being poured into campaigns through political committees, and it’s virtually impossible to track the donors.
Mary Ellen Klas in the Herald/Times Tallahassee bureau says current law limits contributions to candidates to $500 in the primary and $500 in the general election.
“So that’s a total of $1000 to influence a candidate. Lawton Chiles was behind it twenty-some years ago and his idea was – there was too much money in the process and you want the little guy to be able to contribute money", Klas explained. "But over the years there have been federal rulings and other restrictions on that kind of campaign limit so that we now have a system where everybody goes around the individual campaign accounts.”
The government watchdog group Integrity Florida wants lawmakers to allow unlimited campaign contributions to candidates at the legislative and state level. In exchange, candidates would have to disclose all of their donations and limit their connections to political committees.
In the last election cycle, Integrity Florida found that three out of every four dollars in campaign donations went to political committees instead of individual candidates.