What is meant by “soft money”?

Soft money is a type of political funding that is not regulated under election law. It is money that is not directly related to a political campaign and does not need to be reported to the FEC (Federal Election Commission). Usually, soft money is raised by political action committees (PACs) and used for activities such as voter registration drives, issue advocacy, and other such activities. In Arkansas, soft money can be used to pay for advertisements that support a political candidate. However, it cannot be used to pay for any type of media or broadcast advertisement telling people to vote for or against a candidate. This means that political committees and individual citizens can form PACs to help a candidate with activities such as phone banking and canvassing, but they cannot use soft money to purchase paid media. Soft money is controversial because it allows for a lot of campaign funding to come from outside sources that are not held accountable in the same way that FEC regulated funds are. In Arkansas, laws have been passed to try and control the use of soft money, but some argue that these laws are not enough to keep money from outside sources from influencing elections.

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What is meant by “soft money”?

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