Today, the Sunlight Foundation launched a campaign urging Senators to voluntarily file their campaign finance reports electronically. Presidential candidates and candidates for the House have filed their campaign finance reports electronically with the Federal Election Commission for over a decade. The reports let the public know what special interests, lobbyists or out-of-state donors might be funding a candidate’s campaign.

U.S. Senators have exempted themselves from mandatory electronic filing of campaign reports, holding fast to an archaic system in which they file their reports with the secretary of the Senate, who prints them out and delivers them to the FEC. The FEC spends about $250,000 and untold hours having the records typed in, line by line, to its databases. This isn’t just inefficient spending of our tax dollars, it’s a waste of time that denies the public real time access to information that can help shape and inform their opinions about the people they will be voting for in November.

Legislation has been introduced to mandate electronic filing by Senate candidates, but the common sense Campaign Disclosure Parity Act has long suffered as a sacrificial lamb in the world of political gamesmanship and its passage is far from certain. Ultimately, a legal mandate will be necessary to ensure universal electronic filing, but until then, senators and Senate candidates can voluntarily file their campaign finance reports electronically, shining a bright and timely light on campaign finance information while decreasing the chances that errors will occur when the data is re-entered.

Only a handful of Senators currently file electronically. The rest should be embarrassed at their complacency and willingness to live in the dark ages. Campaigns already have this information in electronic form, and the FEC makes it easy to file electronically. Supporters of transparency, please call your Senators and ask them to use the net.

To read more about e-filing, check out our handy resource page.

*Photo by Steve Rhode

The FEC’s decision on Stephen Colbert’s request to form a PAC garnered a lot of publicity today, but a second, less noticed decision has potentially far more devastating consequences. The FEC unanimously decided that federal officeholders and candidates may solicit contributions for independent expenditure-only PACS, also known as Super PACs. Candidates and elected officials may only ask for contributions of $5,000 or less from individuals, but the Super PACs are free to take unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and labor unions.

This decision takes us perilously close to the days of soft money—those unlimited contributions candidates would solicit for the national parties in order to skirt limits on how much could be directly given to their campaigns. Soft money contributions to the national parties dried up after limits were put in place by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.

But now they are back. Almost. The FEC’s decision today opened the door for elected officials to ask corporate CEOs or union leaders for personal contributions of no more than $5,000. That is a limit in name only. There is nothing preventing those donors from writing a check for far more than that amount, not only from their personal pocketbook but from their corporate or union treasuries as well. The nudge-nudge-wink-wink fundraiser is fully operational.

Moreover, the Super PACs for which Members of Congress will be dialing for dollars are legally known as “Independent Expenditure Only Political Committees,” begging the question: Can a PAC act independently from a candidate or elected official who is raising money for it?

The campaign finance system is in tatters. Despite niceties that place “limits” on how much candidates and elected officials can ask for, the fact is that unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and unions now have multiple avenues to reach the center of our electoral process. Transparency is the thread that may hold accountability in the democratic process in place. A version of the DISCLOSE Act, the Lobbyist Disclosure Enhancement Act and the Shareholder Protection Act are important tools to ensure that as unlimited money takes over our elections, we can at least see where it is coming from.

When the Citizens United ruling came down last year I spent a great deal of time explaining the specifics of how corporations could spend money in elections to friends, family, and on the radio and television. The biggest confusion that a lot of people had was whether corporations could, in the wake of the ruling, contribute directly to the campaign of a political candidate. The answer was easy: no.

According to the Washington Post, the Republican members of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) want to change that. These three members released a document stating that corporations should be able to contribute directly to the campaigns of federal office seekers. The document states that the prohibition on these direct donations are "at best suspect," in light of the Citizens United ruling.

It is not clear where, exactly, these FEC commissioners see an inference towards the elimination of the ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates in the Supreme Court's ruling. The ruling assails the Austin ruling's finding of an anti-distortion reasoning for banning corporate independent expenditures, but repeats the Buckley finding that direct contributions to candidates can be banned and limited due to an anti-corruption concern, whether real or just an appearance of. The only time the Citizens United ruling swipes at anti-corruption concerns is to state that they do not apply to independent expenditures.

Senators Tester and Cochran introduced the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act today, a bill that would speed disclosure of public campaign finance information, ensure the accuracy of that information, improve efficiency and save taxpayers money. Sunlight has been supporting a version of this bill for the past three congresses—pretty much since we first opened our doors. Maybe this no-brainer bill will finally become law during the 112th Congress.

Senators’ counterparts in the House, presidential candidates and PACs all electronically file their campaign finance reports. Senators, on the other hand, remain mired in an archaic system in which they file their quarterly reports with the Secretary of the Senate, who then prints them out and delivers them to the Federal Election Commission. That agency then inputs the information into its computer databases so it can be publicly viewed online, all at annual cost of about a quarter-million dollars of taxpayer money. Eliminating this duplicative exercise balance the budget, but the outmoded process is worse than simply wasteful. Re-entering the data delays public access to crucial information about who is funding Senate campaigns, sometimes until after the election takes place.

The previous versions of this bill all have had significant bipartisan support and no Senator that we know of has ever publicly opposed the bill. So why are we still waiting for it to pass?

The culprit is Senator Mitch McConnell and his minions, who have demanded that in order for Senators to be able to vote on the bill, there must also be a vote on an unrelated controversial amendment. The amendment would force nonprofit and religious organizations to disclose the names of anyone who gives $5000 or more to the organization any time the group exercises its right to file a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee. Look closely. The self-serving amendment has nothing to do with the disclosure law. But more importantly, if the amendment became law, the result would be fewer legitimate inquiries into Senators’ ethical conduct.

The reason the Republicans have been able to make unwarranted demands for a vote on this “poison pill” amendment is because they have objected to Majority Leader Reid’s attempts to bring the bill up by "unanimous consent," a procedure the Senate uses to move non-controversial bills quickly, so as to preserve limited floor time for contentious issues. In an ideal world, unanimous consent would be the best to get this straightforward bill enacted. But it hasn’t worked so far. If the Republicans continue to insist on the amendment, perhaps it is time to let the bill come to the floor for a vote. If any Senator is willing to go on record as being against transparency, efficiency and saving taxpayers’ dollars, let him. In the end, we think enough Senators will oppose the amendment and vote to enact a clean electronic filing bill once and for all.

The Federal Election Commission marked this one-year anniversary of the Citizens United case by failing to do anything to provide better disclosure of runaway secret campaign spending brought about by the Supreme Court's decision. The weak-by-design Commission, governed by six commissioners evenly divided by party, could not get a majority to vote to open a rulemaking addressing the disclosure issues raised by the case. The agency’s inaction was not on final rules that would become the law of the land. The agency couldn’t even agree to put out proposed rules and let the public comment on whether the proposals would work. It’s sadly reminiscent of the filibusters used by Congress to kill the DISCLOSE Act in Congress last year. Disclosure is apparently so distasteful in some quarters that the people entrusted to make our laws can’t even discuss it, for fear there it might lead to greater transparency.

The FEC’s current disclosure rules for independent expenditure and express advocacy communications, written before the Supreme Court opened the door to vastly more corporate and union money to infiltrate campaigns, are woefully out of date. It has to be said that without Congressional action, the agency probably would not be able to provide the comprehensive disclosure Sunlight has called for. But, there is no excuse for the FEC's failure to make significant improvements to its own disclosure rules in order to respect and uphold the Court’s reasoning that, “transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”

The Commission noted that in the 2004 election cycle, 96 percent of organizations making electioneering communications reported their sources of funding. Even before Citizens United, that number had been shrinking due to various FEC and Court decisions. But during the 2010 elections, only 41 percent of those groups reported their sources of funding. That is an appalling and frightening statistic that is still further evidence that campaign funding has again become almost as secretive as it was in the pre-Watergate days.

In a statement, FEC chair Cynthia L. Bauerly said, "I remain hopeful that the Commission will be able to reach consensus on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking…” It took the FEC a year to reach this point of no action. Forgive us, Chair Bauerly, if we don’t share your optimism that the FEC will succeed in creating meaningful disclosure rules before the 2012 election season begins.

The Washington Post weighs in on the growth of "Super Pacs," organizations that can take unlimited funds from any source and spend them to influence elections. You can find a complete list of these Super PACs, technically called independent expenditure committees by the Federal Election Commission, here.

My colleague Ryan Sibley has followed them since one Super PAC, the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund, spent $50,000 to run phone banks to help Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., stave off a primary challenge. Super PACs also intervened in Florida elections and have been set up by everyone from Joe the Plumber to Karl Rove.

Use the Reporting Group's new tool, Follow the Unlimited Money to track all independent expenditures by traditional party committees, labor unions that have taken advantage of Citizens United to spend unlimited sums straight from their coffers to influence elections, and the new Super PACs.

My colleague Lindsay Young reports on what appears to be a unique fundraising strategy employed by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. Rather than raise the bulk of her campaign funds from political action committees and individual donors, Waters sells space on mailers to candidates and political causes she's endorsed*, sometimes for as much as $45,000.

The endorsements show up on "slate mailers," essentially campaign literature sent out by Waters to her constituents listing approved candidates and appropriate votes on ballot initiatives. A Federal Election Commission spokesman told us that selling endorsements is "exempt from the definition of ‘contribution’ and ‘expenditure’ under the Federal Election Campaign Act." In other words, the bedrock principles of campaign rules that apply to candidates--limitations on the amount of donations and the kinds of contributors--don't apply.

So Dave Jones, who's running for insurance commissioner in California, paid Waters $25,000 for her endorsement. Under California election law, he can raise money directly from labor unions and businesses, as well as individuals. So the labor union AFSCME, for example, gave Jones $12,900. Roxborough, Pomerance, Nye and Adreani LLP, a law firm "dedicated solely to providing businesses with a broad range of legal services in all facets of civil litigation with a primary focus on business, insurance, employment, and wage and hour litigation," donated $6,500. As did Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff LLP, a law firm specializing in personal injury suits. Those three donations more than cover Jones' purchase of Waters endorsement, but all three would be impermissible at the federal level--neither law firms nor labor unions can donate directly to federal candidates. This is not to say that those three donations, out of the thousands that Jones received, went directly to Waters, only that all money is fungible, and Waters benefits by selling an endorsement to a committee that takes contributions that her own campaign can't take directly.

What would stop a politician from selling an endorsement for $1 million?

*--Updated to fix a misleading wording. The process that Waters' campaign uses in putting together slate mailers is described here (scroll down).

The Committee on House Administration marked up the DISCLOSE Act today, overcoming the first of many hurdles the bill will face before it becomes law. The bill, which passed out of Committee on a party line vote, included an important Sunlight amendment that will vastly improve the transparency provisions in the bill by ensuring that new disclosure reports detailing electioneering and independent expenditures will be electronically filed and disclosed on the FEC’s website within 24 hours.

Sunlight encouraged Members of the Committee to support this change, which is a real victory for transparency and improves upon an earlier version of the bill in the manner we called for here.  Now, anyone looking for information on corporate or union disclosures will be able to find them in one place, in real time, rather than engaging in a far-flung search across corporate and union websites.

In a rare show of bipartisanship, the amendment, which was offered by Rep. Susan Davis, passed unopposed. Sunlight thanks all the Members of the Committee for demonstrating their support for transparency.

Sunlight is pleased that Rep. Susan Davis is offering a simple but important amendment to fix the DISCLOSE Act—the bill that will require increased disclosures of corporate and union campaign expenditures resulting from the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC. The Davis amendment, which will be offered at today's markup of the bill in the Committee on House Administration, would require any mandatory disclosure reports to be filed electronically with the FEC so that they can be immediately searched and sorted on the FEC’s website.

The fix should cost the FEC nothing yet will give voters a centralized location to go in order to find out about new spending on electioneering and independent expenditures. It fills a gaping hole in the DISCLOSE Act and we hope that all Members on the Committee support this common sense solution that will shine more light on campaigns.