ABSTRACT
In the 1970s, the laws regulating federal election campaign financing in the United States underwent dramatic changes. In regard to presidential campaigns, enactments were intended to minimize opportunities for undue financial influence on officeholders and to make the election process more open and competitive. The laws have accomplished some of their aims, but they have had some unintended, and not always salutary, consequences. The degree to which the laws have failed to achieve their intended effects testifies at least as much to the inventiveness of political actors in circumventing the laws and to the intractability of election campaign finance in a pluralistic society as to the deficiencies of the laws.
