Campaign Finance Disclosure and Transparency

The total cost of the presidential and congressional elections in 2016 has been estimated at $6.3 billion. The price tag itself is not the only problem.

Political money in the United States today is not only big but also dark. Big money is especially harmful to the legitimacy and effectiveness of political institutions when voters do not know where the money is coming from or whose interests it serves.

Voters have a right to know the identities of those running political ads and shaping campaigns.

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision (Recommendation 1.5), big money is here to stay. But in its decision, the Court did leave one avenue for reform: the use of disclosure laws to make dark money less dark. Disclosure would help deter some big money groups and would reduce the impact of special-interest spending.

In 2009, Congress came close to passing a major disclosure bill that would have helped voters understand who is paying for campaign ads. The bill, which would have become the DISCLOSE Act, passed the House in 2009 and got fifty-nine votes in the Senate, but was killed on a filibuster.

Recently, states such as Colorado and New Jersey have adopted strong disclosure laws that require transparency around political expenditures.

These laws apply to political spending that passes through LLCs and 501(c)(4) organizations, which function as vehicles for much of the dark money that enters politics today. Some states have even required actual donors’ identities to appear in campaign ads.

Campaign Legal Center, Faithful Democracy, and Issue One are committed to working to implement this recommendation in order to help reinvent American democracy for the 21st century.