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TexasgeneralelectionCQ.edited.docx

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The article:

Samuels, Alex. "Campaign Finance for Dummies: A Guide to Texas Election Reporting Rules". The Texas Tribune, 2018.

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/02/01/campaign-finance-dummies-guide-texas-election-reporting-rules/.

This article is about reporting the source of campaign finance in election candidates running for seats in both state-wide and Legislature are required to disclose their finances of the Campaign for the last six months. These reports should be accessible to the public and are essential in the election process. The main objective of this is to help in fighting corruption since everyone will know where the candidates get their campaign finances. These reports are to be filed to the Texas Ethics commission (Samuels, 1). In a non-election year, this report is supposed to be filed twice a year, but on the election year, this report is filed four times before the election date. Failure to file this report attracts a fine starting from $500 up to $ 10,000. Candidates are also expected to keep an eye on cash on hand and loan during the campaign period. The article also talks about campaign finances restriction on personal contribution as well as candidate s spending per election. Political parties are also regulated in financing and expenditure during the election periods.

This article is connected with chapter five covered in our class about Campaigns and Elections. Political campaigns can be defined as organized efforts and activities with the main objective of influencing decision making of a political group to support a particular idea. In our context campaign aims at influencing Texas citizens to vote for a specific person or in support or against a referendum. Election, therefore, can be defined as the process of choosing representatives through a democratic process of voting. This article connects with Campaign and election by ensuring the process is corruption-free, and all the money used during this process is accounted for. With this objective in mind of ensuring ethics in election and campaigns in Texas administration have to ensure the whole process of campaign financing is controlled, and every coin accounted. The candidate is expected to file this report to two different bodies regardless of the election year or not. They are expected to file this report on the Texas Ethics Commission as well as the Federal Election commission. This will ensure that campaigns are free of corruption as well as ethical (Klarin,50).

The article also connects with the topic of political parties that we covered in the class. Political parties are supposed to ensure that candidate running on their party ticket have filed the required report before the deadline to ensure that they are not disqualified from contesting in the election (Klarin, 28). The candidate is required to also file a report on campaign finances to the Federal Election Commission regardless of whether we are on an election year or not. Imposing hefty fines on the candidates who fail to report on time or not file at all will help prevent corruption during campaigns and after the election when the winning candidates might try to recover what they spent during the election. Corruption scandals will negatively affect the political parties' reputation. The article also talks about contribution limits in Texas, this contribution may be from political parties, or individuals and election bodies seek to control. Personal and political parties spending are also restricted spending and contributions in campaigns are restricted.

Work cited

Klarin, Jonas. Term Length and Public Finances: The Case of US Governors. Uppsala University, 2019

Samuels, Alex. "Campaign Finance for Dummies: A Guide to Texas Election Reporting Rules". The Texas Tribune, 2018.

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