ComputerWorld interviewed James Allen, the IT manager at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), a month ago and reposted it yesterday.... View Article
Continue readingSen. Ensign’s Enemy List
Today, NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon filed an ethics complaint against Sen. Gordon Smith for using Senate property to make a political... View Article
Continue readingMemo to Senator Reid: Take Ensign Up on His Offer on S. 223
Knowing we had a great opportunity to corner Sen. Ensign, who’s blocking a bill requiring electronic reporting for senators’ campaign... View Article
Continue readingPass 223 Update
Last week, we launched the web site – Pass223.com – to get support in the Senate for S. 223, a... View Article
Continue readingPass S. 223
Today, the Sunlight Foundation launched a new web site, Pass223.com, to harness the distributed power of the Internet to pressure... View Article
Continue readingLegislative History Detective: Senate Electronic Filing
We've expended enormous energy and blog space to advocate for the Senate to file their campaign finance reports electronically, something that probably shouldn't take that much effort, but it does. If you need a primer on the issue you can watch this video we made. One thing of note in this whole saga is that Congress, in 1999, mandated electronic filing for all campaign committees, but somehow the Senate doesn't have to comply. Why is this?
In December of 1995, Congress passed a bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act to allow the FEC to accept electronic filing, a legislative recommendation previously made by the FEC to give them a statutory requirement and funding to create an e-filing system. The bill, which became Public Law 104-79, also changed the filing location for members of the House from the Clerk of the House to the FEC. This seems innocuous, but it is important.
Continue readingSunlight for Senate Campaign Contributions
For the past year, the Sunlight Foundation has worked to get a bill passed that would require Senators to file their campaign finance contribution reports electronically, allowing that information to be more readily available before elections than it is now. Passage of the bill has been blocked by Republicans, specifically Sen. John Ensign, for this same amount of time. We aren't going to give up on our fight to get S. 223 passed and intend to keep the pressure on this year. To kick things off we've made this video to explain the issue and keep the attention on Sen. Ensign and his unreasonable hold on the bipartisan bill:
Continue readingSen. Ensign Still Opposes Transparency
Sen. John Ensign continues to block the campaign finance electronic filing bill that Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Russ Feingold have been attempting to pass all year. The bill, which the Sunlight Foundation has fought hard to get passed, has 41 cosponsors including 16 Republicans (including Sens. Bob Bennett, Lamar Alexander, and John Cornyn among others). Despite this not being a partisan issue, Ensign insists on blocking consideration of the bill by offering an irrelevant and controversial amendment, which initially came from the offices of Sen. Mitch McConnell, to require outisde groups filing ethics complaints to disclose their funding sources. This has been noted as unconstitutional law and is an absurd requirement to demand.
Is the Senate Ethics Committee truly overburdened with cases? Sen. Ensign says that complaints in the Senate can be written "on a beverage napkin or written in crayon." I'm not sure what number of ethics complaints are submitted by drunks and children (or some combination of the two) but it can't be that high. In fact, the only known ongoing Senate Ethics Committee investigation was started by the Senate Republicans when they filed a complaint against Sen. Larry Craig for pleading guilty to possibly, maybe, perhaps being gay. Ellen just linked to a list of potential ethical issues facing a number of Republican Senators that could be investigated. If outside groups can file these complaints so easily - in crayon and on a beverage napkin - why isn't the Ethics Committee investigating anything?
Continue readingCall for Ensign to Stop Obstructing Electronic Filing Bill
Going on eight months now the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, requiring senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically, has been held up by proceedural maneuvers from the Republican side. After a series of secret holds placed on the bill were thwarted once secret holds were banned (Senators with secret holds must reveal their identity after 72 hours) Sen. John Ensign blocked the bill by offering a poison pill amendment that lacked relevance to the bill. Ensign's amendment, revealed on this blog to have originated from the offices of Mitch McConnell, requires outside organizations filing ethics complaints to reveal their donor list. For months now, this irrelevant, poison pill amendment has blocked a simple change in how Senators file their campaign finance reports that would help make the data more readily accessible to the voting public. Now a coalition of groups, including a number of conservative groups, has formed to ask Ensign to drop his amendment and allow the electronic filing bill to pass. The groups include:
Alliance for Justice
Americans for the Preservation of Liberty
The American Conservative Union
James Bopp Jr., General Counsel James Madison Center for Free Speech
Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest
The Free Speech Coalition
Gun Owners of America,
National Center for Public Policy Research
OMB Watch
The full letter is after the jump.
Continue readingIs There Electricity in the Air?
Matt Mosk of the Washington Post writes today about the stalled bill that would require Senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically, two days after I had a piece published in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Maybe we can light a spark?
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