While some specifics are lacking in presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton‘s proposed overhaul of how federal candidates get their campaign money, it’s clear which candidate would benefit most if her blueprint were applied retroactively to the funds already raised by White House aspirants: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), her more liberal rival for the Democratic nomination who has gained on her in primary polls.

Clinton’s plan, announced Tuesday, includes three main parts: overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, increase public disclosure of political spending and give more weight to small donations.

The Democratic front-runner calls for creating an opt-in system that would match small individual donations with federal funds. The plan doesn’t specify what would count as a “small” donation. It would, however, require those participating to agree to a lower limit for donations from individuals, which currently are capped at $2,700. No figure was mentioned, but Clinton indicated it would be “substantially lower.”

Sanders would clean up under such a system, were it applied to the funds he’d raised as of June 30. Nearly 70 percent of his individual contributions have totaled $200 or less. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of Clinton’s individual contributions are considered large, totaling more than $200 each.

On the Republican side, 68 percent of individual contributions to Ben Carson have been small, while more than 90 percent of Jeb Bush’s have been large.

The idea is that with a greater focus on small donors, Clinton’s plan could lead to a diminished role of super PACs and other groups that can take unlimited contributions and have proliferated since the Citizens United ruling.

Much of the Republican fundraising energy has been focused on super PACs. While all the Republican candidates had raised a combined $65.5 million midway through the year, the super PACs backing them had brought in $235.9 million, Center for Responsive Politics research shows.

On the Democratic side, the emphasis is reversed: Candidates took in $64.8 million, while their supporting super PACs raised just $19.2 million. Clinton has the support of super PAC Priorities USA Action, which raised about $15.7 million in the first half of 2015.

Clinton’s program would set a “reasonable limit” on the amount of matching funds a candidate could get. Public funding would be available for presidential and – for the first time – congressional candidates. Both would need to raise a certain number of small donations before they could qualify for matching public funds.

Paul Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center and a campaign finance law expert, said the Clinton campaign could have used New York City’s matching funds program as a model. The program gives $6 to a candidate for every $1 he or she receives for donations up to $175 per contributor. When the city established the program in the late 1980s, the rate was $1 for $1.

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Ryan, who called New York City’s program the “gold standard for matching funds systems,” said a 6-1 ratio creates more of an incentive for candidates to engage with small donors and gives contributors a “compelling reason to write small checks.”

The price tag of a matching program on the federal level could “induce sticker shock” at first glance, Ryan said. But, he noted, existing local programs don’t break the bank. In 2013, New York City paid $38.2 million to 149 participating candidates.

“If you were to implement such a program at the federal level, the price tag would be larger but so too is the total federal budget,” Ryan said.

He added that such a program might require more information – name, address and occupation – to be collected about the small donors than is now the case. Currently, federal campaigns have to disclose the personal information only of donors who make contributions of more than $200. But Ryan said the threshold would need to change for the matching system to work.

Ryan said that Clinton’s team may also be looking to legislation in Congress, like a bill introduced by Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) that would set up a federal 6-to-1 matching system.

Clinton’s plan asserts that she would nominate Supreme Court justices who oppose the Citizens United decision and that she would support a constitutional amendment to overturn it, protecting “against the undue influence of billionaires and special interests” in elections.

She also would require outside groups to reveal their big donors and major transfers to other organizations. The provision is aimed at social welfare groups and trade associations that, under IRS rules, don’t have to disclose their donors but can spend much of the money they raise on political activity.

Another provision in the plan calls for federal contractors to disclose all their political spending, and Clinton supports mandating that publicly traded companies report political spending to their shareholders.

The Clinton campaign declined a request to comment, referring to the plan’s fact sheet.



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