In the election

Election

An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...

 politics of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, an exploratory committee is an organization established to help determine whether a potential candidate should run for an elected office. They are most often cited in reference to United States Presidential hopefuls, prior to the primaries

United States presidential primary

The series of presidential primary elections and caucuses is one of the first steps in the process of electing the President of the United States of America. The primary elections are run by state and local governments, while caucuses are private events run by the political parties...

.

Exploratory committees may be governed by law. For example, the District of Columbia legally defines Exploratory Committees as (in DC Official Code § 1-1101.01(6)(B)(vi)):

Exploratory, draft or "testing the waters" committees are formed solely for the purpose of determining the feasibility of an individual’s candidacy for office. The activities of exploratory committees may include polling, travel, and telephone calls to determine whether the individual should become a candidate.

Ron Elving described the use of exploratory committees in his article, Declaring for President is a Dance of Seven Veils

Dance of the Seven Veils

In several notable works of Western culture, the Dance of the Seven Veils is one of the elaborations on the biblical tale of the execution of John the Baptist...

, which aired on National Public Radio on December 5, 2006. He wrote:

The exploratory committee has been around for decades, and technically it creates a legal shell for a candidate who expects to spend more than $5,000 while contemplating an actual run. Under the rules, exploratory money may be raised without the full disclosure of sources required of true candidates. Only when the candidate drops the exploratory label does the full responsibility of transparency apply.

Candidates use an exploratory committee as not only a transitional phase for their bookkeeping but as an extra claim on media attention. Some of the most skillful handlers like to leak word that their candidate is testing the waters, then leak word that he or she is thinking about forming an exploratory committee. Additional "news" can be made when the same candidate actually forms such a committee and registers with the Federal Election Commission. Yet a fourth round of attention may be generated when the word exploratory gets dropped from the committee filing.

External links

• Testing the Waters and Campaign Committees (Press Release) Federal Election Commission (no date)
• Candidate Registration Brochure Federal Election Commission, March 2005, revised June 2008.

• District of Columbia Campaign Finance Guide