A whole lot of folks are talking "election reform" nowadays but that ain't gettin' it done.In fact, some of the same cats doing the talking are then turning around and availing themselves of a clever, lucrative and usually secretive way of promoting themselves and their causes in state politics. Indeed, a new study has found that political gifts made from outside official campaigns (gifts described as "independent expenditures") amounted to more than $115 million in just five states.
The researchers would have shared information from other states, but they found it was nearly impossible because of inadequate (or non-existent) reporting requirements in most states.
Here's a few choice excerpts from Linda King's report, "Indecent Disclosure: Public Access to Independent Expenditure Information at the State Level."
In an effort to limit the increasing costs of campaigns, as well as the potential for corruption in state politics, many states have enacted laws limiting campaign contributions. Experience has shown, however, that when a law limits contributions from one source, loopholes are often found that bring entirely new sources of revenue into existence
Currently, independent expenditures (IEs) are the largest loophole contributors use to circumvent state limits on direct campaign contributions. In most states, individuals, political action committees (PACs), ideological organizations, and even some corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money for IEs supporting or opposing particular candidates, as long as these expenditures are not coordinated with the candidates they are benefiting. Other times, such groups will attack or praise candidates without expressly urging support or opposition at the polls in an attempt to evade enforcement of reporting and disclosure laws... While 39 states have laws defining independent expenditures and requiring entities (individuals and/or organizations) to report them, only five states currently have effective disclosure of this information to the public — as measured by the criteria above. In essence, information on who is spending unlimited funds to influence state-level campaigns is virtually a secret in the vast majority of states...
The five states that currently provide the public with reasonably effective disclosure of IEs made during the 2005-2006 election cycle are Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine and Washington. While only Maine requires a separate IE report that is easily identifiable and viewable in its entirety on-line, the four other states use their regular campaign disclosure reports to collect and store IE information in such a way that it can be accessible. Each of those four states rely heavily on electronic reporting and fairly sophisticated electronic databases that can retrieve the data. Still, it took some effort on the part of experienced Institute staff who are well-trained in collecting campaign-finance data for the Institute to extract and evaluate the IE information from those states' databases. It would be more difficult for a member of the public to do so...
Currently 11 states do not require reporting of IEs in their state campaign-finance statutes: Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont and Wyoming. This is not surprising in five of the states — Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico and North Dakota. Because those states do not limit contributions by individuals and PACs to candidates, there is not much impetus to circumvent limits on direct contributions through IEs. However, Maryland, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont and Wyoming do have campaign contribution limits, along with the inevitable pressure to evade those limits that creates more opportunities for IEs to become an important component of financing elections. Effective disclosure of the special interests that fund IEs in those states would dramatically increase the transparency of politics in these states...
In Nebraska, any person or organization spending money to influence an election must file a campaign-finance report; IEs must be reported as such, along with identification of the candidate or ballot measure affected and whether the expenditure was made in support or opposition. Only individuals are required to file a separate IE report and only one individual correctly filed such a report during the 2006 election cycle. The remainder of the IEs made during the cycle are buried somewhere within the regular campaign-finance reports filed by committee filers. However, the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission does not identify which of the reports contain IEs. When the Institute asked the Commission to query their database to identify specific entries in order to identify which committees had reported making IEs, the Institute was told that the Commission does not have the ability to query their database for this information and do not have time to look at the reports manually, but welcomes others to do so.6 This would require obtaining a comprehensive list of committees who have filed campaign finance reports (which are not available online), reviewing thousands of filers to find out which filed reports for the year in question, and then reviewing each of their expenditures line-by-line to determine if any IEs had been made so that copies of those particular reports could be printed.
Okay, okay. So "election reform" hasn't yet achieved what it was supposed to. And because of such things as these secretive Independent Expenditures, our political process remains all too susceptible to distortion and corruption.
However, there are things you and I can do to help close the loopholes and institute some "sunlight" policies into our election affairs. One example is to forward this Vital Signs Blog post (along with your personal request for quick action) to your Senators and Congressmen. Ask them to to stop the efforts to undermine our constitutional rights (like McCain/Feingold has done) and instead simply press for fair play and full disclosure in our election system.
