Political action committees (PACs) are organizations that raise and spend money to support candidates and influence elections. PACs can represent industry groups, labor unions, or individual companies. PACs spend money to run advertisements on specific issues or for candidates, finance get-out-the-vote drives, do research on election issues, and more.
In the 1970s, the Federal Election Committee (FEC) was created to regulate campaign finance and eliminate financial abuses in political campaigns. The FEC limits the size of political donations and requires reporting of campaign donations and spending. Several Supreme Court cases in the decades following its establishment limited the FEC’s regulations, often citing political spending as a form of free speech. As a result, spending by PACs has increased in the past several elections.
