Two campaign finance reform bills offered by U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) aim to improve transparency and ensure fraudulent and foreign donations don’t influence America’s political campaigns, individual candidates, or electoral outcomes.
“We must increase transparency and update the rules to reflect the technological advances of the 21st century,” Rep. Steil, chairman of the Committee on House Administration, said on Monday.
The congressman on May 11 sponsored both the Campaign Finance Transparency Act, H.R. 8720, and the Preventing Foreign Interference in American Elections Act, H.R. 8721, which he said will be marked up by his committee later this week.
Rep. Steil noted that the current campaign finance laws weren’t drafted for the modern era, according to his investigation into ActBlue, a nonprofit, digital fundraising platform and registered political action committee (PAC) founded in 2004 that enables individuals to donate to Democratic candidates, progressive organizations, and non-profits. It acts as a conduit for small-dollar donors, having raised over $16 billion for Democratic causes since its inception.
“The major gaps we’ve uncovered are being exploited by fraudsters and foreign nationals to make illegal political donations,” he said. “For example, right now an individual could make a fraudulent donation online in someone else’s name and avoid getting caught. That’s an unacceptable vulnerability that bad actors are taking advantage of.”
If enacted, the Campaign Finance Transparency Act would require the name on a credit or debit card to match the name of the donor; remove the de minimis reporting threshold for donors; require political contributions via credit or debit card to include a CVV/CVC number and a billing ZIP code; and require document verification for donors without U.S. mailing addresses.
H.R. 8720 also would prohibit contributions via gift cards; prohibit knowingly directing, helping, or assisting any person in making a contribution in the name of another person; and require suspected straw donations schemes to be reported to the Federal Election Commission, according to Rep. Steil’s bill summary.
Likewise, the Preventing Foreign Interference in American Elections Act would ban foreign nationals from donating for specified election-related activities, including voter registration drives, ballot harvesting, voter research and polling, and the administration of elections by state or local officials, according to another bill summary.
H.R. 8721 also would prohibit aiding or facilitating assistance to foreign nationals in making campaign contributions, and prevent federal agencies from collecting or disclosing tax-exempt donor information, subject to specified exceptions, the summary says.