Cite as: 540 U. S. 93 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
the efficacy of FECA's longtime statutory restriction—approved by the Court and eroded by the FEC's allocation regime—on contributions to state and local party committees for the purpose of influencing federal elections. See 2 U. S. C. §§ 431(8)(A), 441a(a)(1)(C); see also Buckley, 424 U. S., at 38 (upholding FECA's $25,000 limit on aggregate contributions to candidates and political committees); cf. California Medical Assn. v. Federal Election Comm'n, 453 U. S. 182 (1981) (upholding FECA's $5,000 limit on contributions to multicandidate political committees).
Like the rest of Title I, § 323(b) is premised on Congress' judgment that if a large donation is capable of putting a federal candidate in the debt of the contributor, it poses a threat of corruption or the appearance of corruption. As we explain below, § 323(b) is narrowly focused on regulating contributions that pose the greatest risk of this kind of corruption: those contributions to state and local parties that can be used to benefit federal candidates directly. Further, these regulations all are reasonably tailored, with various temporal and substantive limitations designed to focus the regulations on the important anticorruption interests to be served. We conclude that § 323(b) is a closely drawn means of countering both corruption and the appearance of corruption.
The first two categories of "Federal election activity," voter registration efforts, § 301(20)(A)(i), and voter identification, GOTV, and generic campaign activities conducted in connection with a federal election, § 301(20)(A)(ii), clearly capture activity that benefits federal candidates. Common sense dictates, and it was "undisputed" below, that a party's efforts to register voters sympathetic to that party directly assist the party's candidates for federal office. 251 F. Supp. 2d, at 460 (Kollar-Kotelly, J.). It is equally clear that federal candidates reap substantial rewards from any efforts that increase the number of like-minded registered voters who
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