Cite as: 533 U. S. 431 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
Although the understanding between donor and party may involve no definite commitment and may be tacit on the donor's part, the frequency of the practice and the volume of money involved has required some manner of informal bookkeeping by the recipient. In the Democratic Party, at least, the method is known as "tallying," a system that helps to connect donors to candidates through the accommodation of a party. See App. 246-247 (Hickmott declaration) ("[The tally system] is an informal agreement between the DSCC and the candidates' campaigns that if you help the DSCC raise contributions, we will turn around and help your campaign"); id., at 268 (declaration of former Senator Paul Simon) ("Donors would be told the money they contributed could be credited to any Senate candidate. The callers would make clear that this was not a direct contribution, but it was fairly close to direct"); id., at 165-166 (Billings declaration) ("There appeared to be an understanding between the DSCC and the Senators that the amount of money they received from the DSCC was related to how much they raised for the Committee").22
Such is the state of affairs under the current law, which requires most party spending on a candidate's behalf to be
Court mistakenly concluded that Colorado I had rejected the anticircumvention rationale as a matter of law, 41 F. Supp. 2d, at 1211, n. 9. We explain below, infra, at 463-465, why Colorado I 's rejection of the anti-circumvention rationale in the context of limits applied to independent party expenditures does not control the outcome of this case.
22 The dissent dismisses this evidence as describing "legal" practices. Post, at 479. The dissent may be correct that the FEC considers tallying legal, see Reply Brief for Petitioner 9, n. 3, but one thing is clear: tallying is a sign that contribution limits are being diluted and could be diluted further if the floodgates were open. Why, after all, does a party bother to tally? The obvious answer is that it wants to know who gets the benefit of the contributions to the party, as the record quotations attest. See also n. 23, infra. And the fact that the parties may not fund sure losers, stressed by the dissent (post, at 478-479), is irrelevant. The issue is what would become of contribution limits if parties could use unlimited coordinated spending to funnel contributions to those serious contenders who are favored by the donors.
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