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Watch Your Neighbors Political Contribution

Posted by Hemos on from the the-joy-of-open-records dept.

arrianus writes "Fundrace.org gives a fascinating perspective on campaign donation laws. You can look up people's political donations to the current presidential campaign based on name (type in a friend's name, and see how much money he donated, and to whom), location (see which of your neighbors are politically active). I leave the privacy implications of this as an exercise to the reader. How long before this is tied into marketing databases? What happens if an employer were to prescreen employees based on political leanings?" Well, it is illegal to screen like that - and frankly, for a healthy democracy, it's probably better to have this in the open. Still, disturbing to see.

7 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Absolutely stupid. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What happens if an employer were to prescreen employees based on political leanings?" Well, it is illegal to screen like that

    Since when has anything being illegal stopped people from doing it? This system will be abused - even if nobody ever gets caught abusing it.

    and frankly, for a healthy democracy, it's probably better to have this in the open. Still, disturbing to see.

    Why? Could somebody please give me a solid reason as to why this is of benefit to a democracy? (though, of course, the US is a federal republic - not a pure democracy).

    If I want to contribute to the Satanist party (or whatever), why can I not choose to do so in private? Worse still - it looks like you can't opt out of this data being collected and accessed by anybody. Knowing that contributions are going to be made available in a public-access database is a hell of an incentive to not donate any money.

    Making any private citizen's financial transactions public is bad - it's only one step from being able to look up anbody's bank balance.

    1. Re:Absolutely stupid. by Stone+Rhino · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I saw this page a few days ago, and I thought about the relative merits of anonymity vs. disclosure in political contributions. Anonymity is only valid if it's airtight -- and anonymity means that no one knows who you gave money to.

      You may not want people to know you gave $50 to the socialists last year, but you may also not want people to know that you gave $50,000 to George W. Bush.

      These forms are a matter of public record: public candidates recieve the money, campaigns for public office are being held, public decisions are being made about who is being elected, and the public ought to be able to know who is financing a candidate's campaign. It is more important to know that someone was paid then to hide that you paid.

      If a person cannot give money freely and openly to their candidate, our system is much more deeply flawed than anything that anonymous donations can fix.

      --


      Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
    2. Re:Absolutely stupid. by Unordained · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I would somewhat rather have a system where politicians themselves -could- not know who had contributed. They're welcome to have their own ideas, campaigns, agendas -- but it'd be nice if they stuck to that, rather than changing course based on who's willing to give money under given conditions. People/corps could contribute based on what the candidate already has in mind.

      At least it would make slightly clearer any cases of "X did Y because (s)he received Z contributions from corporations benefitting from Y" -- you would at least know politicians hadn't gotten "great new ideas" in the mail with a check.

      However, we can't do that. Although we could force money to be sent through an anonymizing agency, corporations could always send an email saying "I hope you enjoyed the recent deposit of $x in your account -- I'm glad you saw our point of view." If need-by, such corporations (or individuals, mind you) could provide receipts to show they were actually the ones being the money transfer. Bank records, etc. would work as well. (To prevent some individuals from taking credit for the donations of others, thus bribing for free.)

      If we can't have one extreme, then perhaps we should want the other. At least we have something to work with. It doesn't prevent corruption at all, however. Can we turn this information to our advantage in fighting corruption? Other than the standard "oh no, he received money!" headlines?

  2. The $199 solution to mandatory disclosure by Tau+Zero · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The threshold for FEC reporting is $200 to a campaign. The obvious solution presents itself: donate $199, and persuade all your friends and relatives who share your leanings to do likewise. Voila, nobody is obliged to say that you donated, and a campaign which is receiving lots of money from people who obviously don't want to be named isn't likely to go beyond the law's requirements.

    For extra credit you can send $100 money orders (purchased with cash) in the names of people you look up in the phone book... or in Chicago, the obituaries.

    --
    Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
  3. my favorite so far by hawkbug · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Connie E. Ballmer
    Homemaker
    N/A
    George W. Bush - $2,000
    3832 Hunts Point Road
    Bellevue, WA 98004

    Steven A. Ballmer
    C.E.O.
    Microsoft
    George W. Bush - $2,000
    3832 Hunts Point Road
    Bellevue, WA 98004

    Atleast Gates was smart enough to not give money legally, he probably gave massive amounts under the table....

    1. Re:my favorite so far by ctr2sprt · · Score: 3, Interesting
      It probably didn't happen under the table. There is an enormous loophole that bypasses the restrictions entirely. The basic idea is that you can spend money which just happens to support a candidate, and as long as it never actually passes through that candidate's hands, it's not subject to campaign finance restrictions. George Soros, the billionaire Democrat, is the most well-known guy exploiting this loophole, but I doubt he's the only one. (Soros is the source of all those controversial ads suggesting Bush is worse than Hitler, and so on.)

      The problem, of course, is that this new loophole results in donations being even harder to trace than they were before campaign finance reform. I think some politicians (like McCain) would actually try to get the bill extended through the courts to close this loophole, but he's justifiably afraid that the Supreme Court will squash the whole thing for being a restriction of free speech.

  4. Re:Haven't we learned yet? by Moridineas · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Interesting theory, but doesn't really stand up. Check out: http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/DonorDemograph ics.asp?cycle=2004

    Also, check out the whole site..pretty interesting!