WHO CARES WHETHER NONE OF US LOOK AT IT ON-LINE OR ON PAPER?

Support for Electronic Filing of Senate Candidates' Campaign-Finance Records Gains Momentum (Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, September 18, 2006, Washington Post)

[I]t's hard to find anyone who will defend the current law. On the other hand, lots of folks have problems with the situation and are eager to say so, including the Federal Election Commission. The FEC has recommended that the Senate move to electronic filing on "multiple occasions," said Michael E. Toner, the FEC's chairman. "Senate campaigns are the only ones that don't file electronically," he said, "even though there's widespread agreement that electronic filing works well and allows data to be publicly available within hours of it being received."

Senators from both sides of the aisle agree. Eleven senators (seven Republicans and four Democrats) sent a letter to Lott in July urging him to approve legislation that would mandate electronic filing. "We believe there is consensus among our colleagues to move to electronic filing and online disclosure of campaign finance reports," said the letter, which was primarily authored by the political odd couple of Sens. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). "The next step in this process is Senate action."

Voters surely would have been better off if such a law been in effect in prior elections. When the polls opened in November 2004, voters were in the dark about $53 million in individual Senate contributions of $200 or more dating all the way back to July, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. If you were a South Dakotan choosing between Tom Daschle, the Senate's Democratic leader, and Republican challenger John Thune, you were almost certainly unaware of large donations totaling $24,000 from employees of the mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae to Daschle, as well as large contributions to Thune from employees of Coastview Capital and L.E. Lehrman and Co. ($12,000 each).

The only way you might have known about these and other major gifts would have been to leaf through the candidates' reports, each of which was about 3,400 pages long. North Carolina voters had it slightly better, but not much; the reports of major party candidates there were only 1,100 pages long.

Full disclosure is fine in theory, but in practice it's meaningless. Voters don't care who funds the campaigns, as long as it's not done with our tax dollars.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 18, 2006 8:25 AM