Campaign Finance Reform Advocates Optimistic After Russians’ Election Influence Success

There has never been a better time for grassroots activists to succeed on a budget. | Pixabay

WASHINGTON, DC–In the wake of the Mueller investigation indictments against 13 Russian nationals for election interference, many Americans cited the news as evidence for their pre-existing understanding of Russiagate.*
President Trump and his defenders claimed the announcement vindicated him because there were no official charges of collusion in the indictment. Similarly, many Cold Warriors, Democrats, and center-leftists said the indictments proved that the Russians had launched an unprecedented campaign of “information warfare” and compared this attack on US democracy to Imperial Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor, which historians say killed considerably more people.

But while these predictable partisan arguments played out, another group of Americans took something more positive from the recent indictments. For campaign finance reform advocates around the country, the Russian indictments show that a small amount of money can make a big impact on elections, even the presidential election.

“Before the 2016 election, I used to think you needed to be a hedge fund-billionaire with a super PAC in order to influence election outcomes. Turns out you just need a Facebook page with some dank memes,” explained Benjamin Smith, who works on the Democracy Is Four People project, which promotes a system of public campaign financing administered by a quadrumvirate of philosopher-kings.

Smith’s view was based on the surprisingly modest budgets that supported the alleged Russian influence campaign. The official charging document indicates that the front organization that carried out the information attacks, the Internet Research Agency, had a monthly budget of around $1.25 million per month at the height of the campaign season, or around $15 million annually. This amounts to 0.2% of the total $6.5 billion spent on all 2016 elections in the US, or 0.6% of the $2.4 billion spent on the presidential election alone.

Other reporting has said that the Russian operatives spent just $100,000 on Facebook advertising, roughly half of which occurred after the election.

For activists like Smith, these tactics offer a possible roadmap for impacting future campaigns. “We’d never considered trying to influence an election by advertising after the election was over,” Smith said, adding that although he disagreed with their goals, the Russians were “clearly innovators”.

*This is a satirical post. The quotes cited above are fictional. Also, although it has been mostly ignored, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein stated publicly that the Justice Department does not allege that the illegal actions of the Russian defendants actually altered the election outcome.