With just over a month until Election Day, most forecasts have Democrats in a strong position to hold their majority in the Senate and have strengthened their position in the last few weeks, moving ahead in close seat polling. But when it comes to the money, the Senate remains very competitive. In this analysis, we look at the money in 19 close races that the Cook Political Report has deemed “Toss-up”, “Lean”, or “Likely” races within the last month. (We’ve excluded the three-way race in Maine for analytical purposes.) The quick summary is that, by our count, the Democrats have the lead in 11 of the 19 races. If money is determinative, this is not a great position for Democrats, since of the 19 seats we analyze, 15 are seats currently held by Democrats.
Continue readingMoney in the House elections, in 8 charts
With just over a month before the election, the general consensus is that Democrats will have a tough time picking up the 25 seats they need to win back the house, despite some protestations. But when it comes to the money, Republicans appear to be in solid shape. Republicans have a fundraising lead in 57 of 90 races that the Cook Political Report has deemed “Toss-up”, “Lean”, or “Likely” races within the last month. Of these races, Republicans are the incumbent party in 54, and Democrats in 30. There are also six new districts in which it does not make sense to speak of an incumbent.
Continue readingWas the Romney Tax Return Bitcoin Ransom Paid?
On September 4th, an anonymous poster claimed to have obtained copies of presidential candidate Mitt Romney's tax returns. They offered to either immediately release the returns or never release them, at the discretion of whomever first paid them one million dollars in the form of bitcoins (approx. 80,500 bitcoins).
It's safe to say that most people think these blackmailers' claims were a hoax: a clumsy and not-very-believable extortion effort that briefly made headlines and then disappeared. Certainly this is the prevailing opinion around the Sunlight office. But we think the bitcoin phenomenon is fascinating for both technical and social reasons (yes, there are labs staffers who have mined bitcoins). And since today is the day of the ransom, it seems like a good time to consider what, if anything, the release or lack of release could mean.
The Romney campaign has chosen not to release the returns, so it's safe to assume that they don't want the returns released by anyone. The release was scheduled to happen in the absence of a payment, so the poster seems at least slightly biased against the Romney campaign. This seems to imply that the lack of a release means that the ransom was paid (not necessarily by the Romney campaign). Yet having not received a ransom and possibly not actually in possession of the returns, a lack of a release allows our anti-Romney protagonist to cast the shadow of an assumed pay-off over the campaign. Thus a lack of a release doesn't tell us much. Ideally, we could detect whether a payoff happened -- but how?
Bitcoins are bought and sold on exchanges similar to the New York Stock Exchange. Traders advertise offers to buy and sell bitcoins at different prices. The exchange matches compatible orders. The price changes based on the exhaustion of orders at a given price. So can't we watch the exchanges for erratic volume and price fluctuations? Unfortunately it's not that simple. The volume on large exchanges like MtGox could facilitate such an exchange in 3 days and they could facilitate it without a detectable change in price or volume over the 24 days since the ransom announcement. Furthermore, bitcoin purchases don't require an exchange. Just as you can buy and sell stocks privately, bitcoin purchases can be conducted privately. Finally, we have to consider the possibility that the ransom-payer could have already had enough bit coins to satisfy the ransom. We'll have to look elsewhere for the evidence.
Unlike the banking system, the bitcoin protocol has no central authorities keeping track of how many bitcoins each participant has. Each participant has only the bitcoins the other parties can prove he has. This conservative approach is required to prevent double-spending of bitcoins. In order to achieve this, the bitcoin network relies on something called the block chain. For each transaction on the bitcoin network, the recipient asks other participants to verify the transaction by completing a zero-knowledge proof and then recording it in a cryptographically tamper-evident manner. For each transaction there needs to be multiple parties involved (the precise number being a matter of preference). This block chain is a huge database available to all bitcoin participants. If the ransom was paid, it would be forever recorded in the block chain.
There are websites dedicated to letting you watch block chain activity. The largest transactions receive quite a bit of attention. Transferring 80k bitcoins in one transaction would be noticed. Thus, to avoid detection of the transaction in the block chain, the parties would require many transactions spread across many sender and recipient addresses. If the recipient wanted to assemble their new-found funds into fewer addresses, they would have to do so through transactions between those addresses. These transactions would also be recorded.
Therefore, if this ransom has been paid or is eventually paid, the transactions would be recorded -- they're in plain sight for all the world to see. It would require a lot of high-tech detective work to find them, but if a payoff happened, it would have to be there.
Do we think it's worth investigating this? No. The odds of the Romney campaign paying a bagman a million bucks in bitcoins seem only slightly better than the Secretary of State secretly being a reptilian alien. But it's a fun exercise to think about.
Continue readingParty crash fail: No Sunlight at Mitt’s fundraiser
We at Sunlight Foundation are fond of writing about fundraisers and gatherings, especially the quirky or high-priced local ones that we come across on our Political Party Time website. But, once in a while, we get a chance to check out the parties in person. Or at least, experience the novelty of attending and meeting the folks who donate and coordinate these expensive affairs while we hang around outside closed doors.
So Thursday evening's fundraiser for Mitt Romney held at the Rennaissance Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington, was an irresistable target. The event was tagged at $2,500 for ...
Continue readingSpending in Wisconsin spikes before debate
As Rep. Tammy Baldwin and former Gov. Tommy Thompson prepare for the first of three debates tonight in a race that will help determine control of the Senate, their campaigns and outside groups are bombarding Wisconsin with advertising to sway the hearts and minds of undecided voters.
An analysis of expenditures and political ad buys shows an increase in expenditures by campaigns and outside groups heading into the last month of the long, politically charged year. Since April, Wisconsin has garnered national attention from its Republican presidential primary, another primary to determine who would run against Gov. Scott Walker in ...
Training Tuesdays: Free webinars every week to get you prepared for Election Day
There are 38 days left before the elections. Whether you are rejoicing the over a month left of punditry or... View Article
Continue readingA half-billion in outside influence: What else could the money buy?
A little less than six weeks shy of Election Day, we've crossed another campaign spending Rubicon: Sunlight's Follow the Unlimited Money tracker has now recorded more than $500 million in a spending on the 2012 campaign by outside interest groups.
For those of you who have a hard time wrapping your heads around all those zeros, Sunlight's Jake Harper has calculated that it's enough to cover 155 football fields with $100 bills.
An indicator of just how rapidly folks who can write big checks are doing so: Our tracker showed a $28 million jump in 48 ...
Continue readingDo business groups’ pre-election forecasts follow their campaign money?
Housing prices and consumer confidence are up but several business groups that have been in town this week have been delivering a distinctly gloomy view of the economy. While the groups have blue-chip reputations in the business world, what's less apparent is their track record of political giving -- one that raises some questions about the forecasts they are presenting six weeks before Election Day.
First out of the blocks: the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Business. The two groups teamed up at a Tuesday press conference to release a survey conducted by Public Opinion ...
Buzzfeed’s five surprising charts show impact of Citizens United
Buzzfeed offers five surprising charts about political money in the 2012 election cycle, feeding off of this recent release from the Federal Election Commission tallying up contributions and spending through June 2012. What they show--by omission--is how much Citizens United and subsequent court decisions and FEC rulings have changed the way campaigns raise and spend money. A few examples:
The first chart shows fundraising by presidential candidates in the first 18 months of each election cycle going back to 2000. Buzzfeed notes, "...presidential candidates spent more money through the second quarter in 2008 and 2004 — also an election with a ...
Continue readingNo close call here: NFL’s political donations tilt Republican
The NFL bigwigs who early this morning conceded defeat in an ongoing labor dispute like to play politics themselves, and tend to favor the party with the most adversarial relationship with unions.
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