Voters hoping to learn who’s contributing to their lawmakers this election season instead find a a gaping hole: Due to antiquated rules requiring senators to file campaign disclosures on paper, the records of upper chamber members take weeks to process. The procedure means that donations made closest to November’s elections will go largely unseen until well after the last vote has been cast. For campaign reform advocates, the set-up is maddening. "It’s absolutely unjustifiable," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign watchdog group. "It really just boggles the mind." Illustration by: Matt Mahurin "Especially in this election cycle," said Josh Zaharoff, assistant director of campaign-finance reform at Common Cause, "which will be the most expensive election in history, we ought to be able to see where this money’s coming from, and we should know before the election’s over." Under current rules, Senate offices must print out their campaign finance reports, which lawmakers store electronically, and mail them to the Sec. of the Senate on Capitol Hill (the reports must be postmarked, though not received, by the specific deadline). The Sec. of the Senate then scans them and emails the digitalized versions to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC posts the non-searchable images online, but also prints another set of hard copies, which are driven to the offices of a government contractor in ...
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Voters hoping to learn who’s contributing to their lawmakers this election season instead find a a gaping hole: Due to antiquated rules requiring senators to file campaign disclosures on paper, the records of upper chamber members take weeks to process. The procedure means that donations made closest to November’s elections will go largely unseen until well after the last vote has been cast. For campaign reform advocates, the set-up is maddening. "It’s absolutely unjustifiable," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign watchdog group. "It really just boggles the mind." Illustration by: Matt Mahurin "Especially in this election cycle," said Josh Zaharoff, assistant director of campaign-finance reform at Common Cause, "which will be the most expensive election in history, we ought to be able to see where this money’s coming from, and we should know before the election’s over." Under current rules, Senate offices must print out their campaign finance reports, which lawmakers store electronically, and mail them to the Sec. of the Senate on Capitol Hill (the reports must be postmarked, though not received, by the specific deadline). The Sec. of the Senate then scans them and emails the digitalized versions to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC posts the non-searchable images online, but also prints another set of hard copies, which are driven to the offices of a government contractor in ...