President Barack Obama rode into office in 2008 on a wave of small donations that some expected would change politics. The small-dollar strategy is still helping Obama fill his campaign accounts, but the electoral landscape has changed rapidly over the past four years and candidates' official campaigns are being overshadowed by unlimited spending from nominally "independent" groups funded by a handful of ultra-wealthy donors.

A Pennsylvania court has found that the state's American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-inspired voter ID law would likely disenfranchise voters and partially blocked its enforcement for the November 2012 election. Ballots cast by voters who do not have ID will still be counted, but the state will still be able to ask for identification and run ads telling voters to obtain ID before election day, potentially leading to confusion at the polls.

After a court decision in March required nonprofit groups running phony "issue ads" to disclose their donors, David Koch's Americans for Prosperity (AFP) shifted to ads expressly calling for President Obama's defeat in the November 2012 elections. At the time, they claimed the change in tactics was only because the president's record was "disastrous," but now that the decision has been overturned and AFP can again run issue ads while keeping their funders secret, they have reverted to their old strategy. Is it because the group no longer thinks the president's record is "disastrous?"