Today, the U.S. Senate can take a step towards changing a costly and opaque practice while joining their colleagues in the House and the White House in the 21st Century.
Continue readingBipartisan momentum is building for Senate e-filing
While only 22 senators e-filed their campaign donors, some related news reveals a positive trend: More GOPers are stating their support for robust disclosure using the Net.
Continue readingOpengov bills still provide hope on Citizens United’s fifth anniversary
To mark Citizens United's fifth anniversary, a number of opengov bills are being introduced to enhance campaign finance data and its disclosure.
Continue readingTransparency advocates look at “The Price We Pay for Money’s Influence on Politics” during Sunlight-hosted event
With the midterms fewer than 50 days away, the Sunlight Foundation and ReThink Media hosted a panel discussion about the oversized role dark money plays in American elections.
Continue readingReminder: Your senators (probably) still file campaign reports on paper
The Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act is a simple measure that would require that Senate candidates file their mandatory campaign disclosure reports online with the FEC.
Continue readingThe Public Online Information Act is back in the House
The Public Online Information Act, which would bring government into the online public square, has now been introduced in the House and Senate.
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Bringing Senate Campaigns into the 21st Century
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy 
of any of the information within the guest blog.
Jon Tester is the junior Senator from Montana. He and his wife, Sharla, still farm the 1,800 acres his grandparents homesteaded in 1912.
With the NSA’s secrets spilling into the news, folks around the country – including U.S. Senators – are demanding more transparency and accountability from the federal government. I fully support these calls for reform.
Transparency matters in the legislative branch, too. My fellow Senators must not neglect their own backyards. My colleagues need to hold themselves accountable to the American people and join me in lifting the veil that hides how Senators and Senate candidates report the money that funds their campaigns.
The Senate’s reporting system is stuck in the Dark Ages, and it’s hurting our democracy.
Continue readingA Decade of Nondisclosure: A Brief History of the Senate’s E-Filing Failures
For more than a decade, the Senate has failed to pass no-brainer legislation requiring Senators and challengers to file campaign... View Article
Continue readingGroups come together in support of Senate e-filing
A coalition of groups interested in campaign finance reform and government openness, including the Sunlight Foundation, have joined together to urge Senators to support the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act and "help ensure that citizens have the same access to campaign finance information about Senate candidates that they currently have regarding all other federal candidates, political parties, and federal PACs." Candidates for President and the House of Representatives file their campaign finance reports electronically; So do party committees and federal PACs. Only Senate candidates still do things the old fashioned way, filing their campaign finance reports on paper. The paper filings, over 380,000 pages worth last year, have to be transferred into electronic formats and posted online by the Federal Election Commission before the public is able to see what kind of money Senate candidates are raising, and who they are raising it from. This process is time consuming, expensive, and unnecessary. Luckily, the legislation introduced in the 113th Congress by Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) would solve this problem and make Senate candidates more transparent and accountable to the public. The bill has been gaining momentum, garnering 34 bipartisan cosponsors since February. Unfortunately, previous versions of the bill have been blocked on a number of occasions. The bill's prospects are unclear this time around, but we are hopeful that the growing momentum for change will help push Senate candidates into the 21st century. You can read the full letter below.
Continue readingThe Senate is trying to trim its budget. They can boost transparency at the same time.
380,251.
That is the number of pages contained in more than 5,000 campaign reports that the Secretary of the Senate's Office of Public Records scanned, processed, and sent to the FEC last year. That number emerged during testimony given by Secretary of the Senate Nancy Erickson to justify her budget request before the Senate Appropriations Committee's Legislative Branch Subcommittee this morning.
Despite their frugal rhetoric, most Senators have refused to move past their costly, inefficient paper-based campaign finance filing system. As they try to find ways to trim budgets, they should eliminate the expensive, anachronistic, and opaque practice of filing their campaign finance reports on paper rather than electronically, as presidential and House candidates along with Political Action Committees have been doing for years.
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