It’s official, the 2014 elections were the most expensive midterm elections in history, costing a total of $3.77 billion, or roughly $46 per vote according to voter turnout estimates. Even more surprising is the fact that there were fewer donors in the 2014 midterms than in any election since 1990, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). This means that not only was this the most expensive midterm election in history, its funding came from fewer people than in years past. Additionally, voter turnout estimates indicate that the percentage of eligible voters who cast ballots in November was the lowest since World War II.

Read more: Campaign Finance: Free Speech or Unfair Influence?

All things considered, the 2014 midterm elections reveal a disturbing trend in American politics, one where a shrinking group of Americans funds elections and voter turnout among the entire population continues to decline.

Spending Breakdown

Candidate and party spending was over $2.7 billion in the 2014 election, according to estimates from the CRP. One possible reason for the increase in the 2014 election was the McCutcheon v. FEC ruling, which struck down the cap for how much an individual can spend in an election cycle while leaving in place limits for individual races and organizations.

An additional $768 million was spent by a variety of independent groups that are not directly affiliated with campaigns.Outside expenditures can come from Super Pacs, 527 organizations, and 501(c) groups that the IRS categorizes as social welfare organizations.

These social welfare organizations are allowed to engage in political activity as long as it is not their primary focus, which in practice means that political spending must account for less than 50 percent of the organization’s budget. In essence, these groups are able to collect unlimited funds from donors, whose names they do not need to disclose, then spend that money on political advertising with a small set of restrictions. For more background information on campaign finance and dark money check out this explainer by Law Street’s Alexandra Stembaugh.

This chart, from the Center for Responsive Politics, details the sources of political spending in the 2014 election by party. For more information on spending in the 2014 election, look at the CRP’s overview.

2014 Election Spending by Category and Party, Source: Center for Responsive Politics

Fewer Donors, More Money

Another one of the Center for Responsive Politics’ major findings about the 2014 election was that the increase in total donations actually came from fewer donors when compared to the 2010 election (the previous midterm). In fact, the number of donors decreased in every category of campaign spending.

According to Russ Choma from the Center for Responsive Politics,

“There were just 434,256 identifiable individual donors to candidates in the 2014 election. That’s 107,000 fewer than there were in the 2010 election.”

CRP identified 773,582 donors in the 2014 election–a decrease of nearly 11 percent relative to the 2010 midterms–yet average contributions rose over 36 percent to $2,639 per donor. It is important to note that these numbers come from FEC data, which does not include donor information for individuals who give less than $200. In terms of outside spending, there were 6.4 percent fewer donors, but the average donation per donor rose nearly 450 percent, going from roughly $1,800 to over $8,000 per donor.

Are liberals catching on to dark money?

Although Republicans/conservatives maintained their significant advantage in dark money spending, accounting for nearly 75 percent of total spending, Democrat/liberal groups did see large increases.

Source: Center for Responsive Politics

The chart above illustrates the recent trends in dark money spending. Conservative groups retained their healthy lead in dark money in the most recent election, going from $119.9 million in 2010 to $124 million in 2014. Dark money spending among liberal groups increased by over 300 percent since 2010, going from $10.7 million to $35.7 million in 2014.

It is important to note that these numbers are limited to what is disclosed to the FEC. Regulations for 501(c) organizations only require disclosure of political spending that occurs 30 days before a primary election or 60 days before a general election. However, the Center for Responsive Politics found that these organizations tend to run “issue” ads outside of these windows to discuss political issues without reporting their spending. As a result, actual political spending likely exceeds the total disclosed to the FEC.

Lower Turnout

Finally, preliminary estimates indicate that only 35.9 percent of eligible voters participated in the 2014 election, the lowest turnout since 1942. This number taken from estimates by the United States Election Project at the University of Florida, which uses voting statistics for the highest office on each state’s ballot to estimate total voters (highest office is used because total vote counts are not available for every state).

These estimates indicate that only six states had a voter turnout greater than 50 percent, while eight states had rates below 30 percent. Although midterm elections historically have lower turnout rates relative to presidential election years, the 2014 election was low even for a midterm. For comparison, voter turnout in 2010 was 41 percent of eligible voters, and the 2012 presidential election had a turnout of 58.2 percent.

The chart below shows voter turnout from 1789 – 2014

Source: United States Election Project

In a time where Americans’ opinions of the government are near record lows, apathy among the general population seems to explain the turnout. Everyone loves to poke fun at headlines that claim Americans are more approving of lice, telemarketers, Genghis Kahn, and even Nickleback than of Congress, but the turnout for the recent election truly reveals the state of political engagement among the public.

While average Americans are less willing to cast a ballot, a small subset of the population is exhibiting more interest in politics than ever before. In a time where people overwhelmingly disapprove of their government and want to limit the role of money in politics, one would think showing up on election day is the next step, but sadly the opposite occurs.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Votes Are In: 2014 Election Was Most Expensive & Least Representative appeared first on Law Street.

UPDATE: July 18, 2014

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) isn’t living up to its responsibilities to the American people. According to an op-ed from the Center for Responsive Politics’ Robert Biersack published today in The New York Times, the FEC no longer does an “adequate job on disclosure” of campaign financial data. He’s right, and the scary thing is that this has the potential to turn into quite a major problem.

It’s ostensibly a simple concept: candidates, campaign committees, and the various other entities that collect and spend money during an election cycle are required to submit cash flow reports to the FEC, and the FEC in turn is required to disclose all that data in a timely manner so that the public is aware of who is financing American elections. But when the Center for Responsive Politics went to go check out the most recent set of disclosures, they weren’t all there. The FEC has promised that they would complete around 95 percent of processing within 30 days of receiving the data, but when asked why this didn’t happen, the FEC essentially just said that it’s running late. Nothing more. And even more concerning, the organization didn’t seem at all worried about this fact, explaining to the Center for Responsive Politics that, “In the current two-year election cycle, the Agency has taken more than 30 days to process 18.8 percent of the new reports filed as of June 20, as compared to 11.4 percent for the same period in the 2011-2012 cycle.” The FEC also referred to the lack of processed data as a “brief” delay. As of press time the FEC has yet to respond to Law Street’s request for comment.

In some ways the reaction from the Center for Responsive Politics and others may seem like making mountains out of molehills. Maybe you think it’s not that big of a deal, or they’ll have the data when they have it, or that government agencies are often unable to meet self-appointed deadlines. It’s easy to think that way, but it’s dead wrong. This is a big deal, one that we all should worry us all.

Although I recognize I’m about to plummet off a huge cliff of political clichés, it’s fair to quote the Gettysburg Address here. We’ve all heard it. We have a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” That principle has held — we elect our officials to represent us, and we expect them to be held accountable to those citizens who voted for them. Recent Supreme Court rulings have made that principle a little more fuzzy — between the Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions, the way in which politicians are influenced has changed. Super PACs dominate political real estate, and as we saw in the 2012 Presidential election, they have the ability to throw plenty of weight around. I’d put my money — disclosed to whoever would like it, of course — on the fact that in the 2014 and 2016 elections we’ll see even more incredible financial influence. And because of these rulings, we don’t necessarily know where that financial influence will come from — only certain types of donations require that the donor’s name is disclosed to the FEC.

That’s why it is so essential that the FEC does its job. There’s already an uphill battle here for Lincoln’s words, and the FEC not disclosing the data for the 2014 election in a timely manner makes it that much less likely that our elected officials are held accountable to those people who elected them. With the amount of money flowing in and out of campaign coffers, any chance we have to know more about that money is essential. The FEC is a government entity, so it needs to hold true to those principles, too: of, for, and by the people. That means that it provides a resource for the people, that’s its job, and the fact that the FEC can’t complete that job in a timely manner is a huge problem.

This isn’t meant to be an alarmist rant about the state of our elections; that’s not useful. Instead I hope that this piece, as well as the Center for Responsive Politics’ op-ed, serves as a kind of call to action. The FEC needs to pull it together, and without public pressure that’s just not going to happen. Part of democracy is that we all hold each other accountable — here’s the opportunity to do that before this gets out of hand.

UPDATE: July 18, 2014

Judith Ingram, Press Officer at the Federal Election Commission responded to Law Street’s request for comment, and the organization does acknowledge that the backlog is a problem:

“The Commission acknowledges that there were delays in the processing of itemized data in the current election cycle, and the Commission has eliminated the backlog. At this time, the agency’s coding of data is over 99% complete. Moreover, the agency has introduced new procedures to prevent such delays in the future. Our goal for the current reporting period is to process 95 percent of electronically filed reports within 30 days of the July 15 reporting deadline.”

Whether or not these new procedures will help will has yet to be seen.

The problems at the FEC aren’t just an isolated incident or a singular example of the ways in which our democracy is struggling. In fact, they’re representative of a bigger problem. The FEC is supposed to have six commissioners — three Republicans and three Democrats. Each term is supposed to be six years, but if a term expires without some sort of appointment, that seat stays with that commissioner who gets to sit until the Senate approves a new commissioner, or he or she retires or dies.

Currently, only two of the FEC’s six commissioners are serving on active terms — Chair Lee E. Goodman and Vice Chair Ann Ravel. They were both appointed by President Obama last year, after the FEC actually reached the point where all its commissioners were serving on expired terms. It was a struggle to even fill those two seats — the nominee prior to Goodman and Ravel got shot down, and Obama didn’t try to nominate anyone else.

Let’s be clear, the very people whose election races the FEC is supposed to monitor have a hard time filling spots at the FEC. Now the FEC is struggling. I’m not going to blame the backlog in reporting solely on the commissioners serving expired terms, but it’s clear that something isn’t working here, and new blood can sometimes be a very good thing. The FEC will be making changes, and that’s good, but maybe a review of the whole system is needed to prevent this kind of problem in the future.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Beverly & Pack via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The FEC is Failing the American People appeared first on Law Street.