Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-12_m6hn.pdf
Page Number: 40.0

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

13 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Doc. 65–1, p. 31.  In other words, officeholders did more in 
exchange for donations repaying their personal loans than 
for  other  donations.  The  analysis  next  looked  at  Section 
304’s  effect.  Here,  the  data  showed  that  politicians  with
debt exceeding the law’s $250,000 threshold became “signif-
icantly less responsive” to contributions than before: They 
began  to  “behave  remarkably  similar  to  their  debt  free
counterparts.”  Id., at 28; see Ovtchinnikov, Self-Funding 3
(similarly stating that those politicians became more “inde-
pendent of contributions from special interest[s]”).  In other 
words, Section 304 did just what Congress thought it would. 
By  preventing  post-election  contributions  from  personally 
enriching  politicians,  the  provision  diminished  donor-re-
sponsive  voting.  The  majority  tries  to  undermine  those 
findings by quoting the kind of careful caveats always ac-
companying good social science.  See ante, at 17; Ovtchinni-
kov, Self-Funding 21 (noting that the study is a “first step
in understanding” and that more work is needed to “fully
pin  down”  all  aspects  of  causation).    But  the  authors  are 
confident—and  rightly  so—in  the  findings  just  described: 
that  Section  304  markedly  decreased  the  frequency  with
which  officeholders  voted  as  donors  would  like.    And  alt-
hough the authors could not responsibly claim that all the 
shifted votes they tallied were part of quid pro quo deals— 
they  are,  after  all,  professors,  not  the  FBI—they  deduce 
from the data that politicians carrying campaign debt were
“less  likely  to  [be]  sell[ing]  access”  than  to  be  “sell[ing]
votes.”  Id., at 18. 

Finally,  the  record  evidence  addresses  the  “almost
equal[ly]”  important  matter  of  the  appearance  of  corrup-
tion.  Shrink Missouri, 528 U. S., at 390; see supra, at 6–7. 
A  Government-commissioned  survey  of  public  opinion 
found  that  81%  of  respondents  believed  it  “very  likely”  or
“likely” that a person who “donate[s] money to a candidate’s
campaign after the election expect[s] a political favor in re-