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Soft money refers to money used to advance a particular political campaign in such a manner as to skirt the legal limits on how much money individuals or organizations are allowed to contribute to political campaigns (termed hard money). Popular soft money techniques include paying for thinly veiled advertising that does not name a specific candidate by name, but focuses so narrowly on particular issues tied to a given campaign that it is obvious which contest the advertisement is targeted at and which candidate the ad supports. Small icon for merging articles File links The following pages link to this file: Friction Jacobin Private branch exchange Pro-feminist Rotary piston engine Tagalog language Saint Veronica Spoiler effect Parser Password length equation Sudovian language Wikipedia:Why arent these pages copy-edited Static scoping Maximum power theorem General... The term soft dollars is used in relationship to certain payments made by investment funds to their service providers. ... In politics, hard money refers to direct contributions, subject to federal contribution limits, made to committees regulated by the Federal Elections Commission. ...
With some exceptions, soft money contributions to political parties were generally made illegal in the United States in 2002 with passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. Many of the soft money-funded activities previously undertaken by political parties have been taken over by various 527 groups. 2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) is U.S. Congressional legislation which regulates the financing of political campaigns. ... A political party is a political organization that subscribes to a certain ideology and seeks to attain political power within a government. ... A 527 group, named after a section of the United States tax code, is a tax-exempt organization that is created primarily to influence the nomination, election, appointment or defeat of candidates for public office. ...
In the United States, a political action committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group organized to elect or defeat government officials in order to promote legislation, often supporting the groups special interests. ... Campaign finance refers to the means by which money is raised for political election campaigns. ... Campaign finance reform is the common term for the political effort in the United States to change the involvement of money in politics, primarily in political campaigns. ... In politics, hard money refers to direct contributions, subject to federal contribution limits, made to committees regulated by the Federal Elections Commission. ...
External links
Representative Democracy versus Corporate Democracy: How Soft Money Erodes the Principle of "One Person, One Vote" (http://www.campaignfinancesite.org/proposals/book-feingold.html) - 1988 article by Russell D. Feingold, co-sponsor of the 2002 law
In academia, soft money can refer to funding through individual research grants, rather than a salary via an academic institution.
Softmoney refers to money used to advance a particular political campaign in such a manner as to skirt the legal limits on how much money individuals or organizations are allowed to contribute to political campaigns (termed hard money).
Popular softmoney techniques include paying for thinly veiled advertising that does not name a specific candidate by name, but focuses so narrowly on particular issues tied to a given campaign that it is obvious which contest the advertisement is targeted at and which candidate the ad supports.
With some exceptions, softmoney contributions to political parties were generally made subject to contribution limitations and reporting reqirements, similar to the limitations on federal candidates in 2002 with passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
"Softmoney" is money that is not made directly to a candidate's campaign, but is spent on an activity, especially "issue advertising", which are advertisements for a candidate's positions or thinly veiled attacks on the opponent's positions, that obviously benefit the candidate.
Before the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, softmoney was mainly contributions made to political parties, under a 1979 amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act which allowed party committees to accept and spend unlimited amounts of money during election campaigns.
They also cannot use softmoney to pay for "electioneering communications"-those referring to candidates for federal election without expressly advocating their election or defeat -- in the 60 days prior to a general election, or 30 days prior to a primary election.