NeoAlertz: Move The Senate Into The 21st Century

Monday, September 18, 2006

Move The Senate Into The 21st Century

Action Alert - Demand Accountability This issue is critical in holding Senators accountable when it comes to who contributes to their campaigns. This is a bipartisan effort that is supported by Redstate and other rightwing bloggers as well as MYDD and the left blogosphere. This effort demands more than just signing a petition. You must make phone calls to critical senators asking that they support this bill that is in committee. Please join me in making this effort work for all Americans. - ƒç

Move The Senate Into The 21st Century
MYDD

There's a bill out there, S. 1508, which would bring Senate candidates up to the same level as their brethren in the House in requiring electronic filing. It has bipartisan support - Sens. McCain and Feingold, Durbin and Cochran, Landrieu and Lugar, among others. But it hasn't gotten a hearing in the Senate since first being introduced in 2003. Why?

Two people stand in its way -- Rules and Administration Committee chair Trent Lott, who's not returning calls from reporters on the topic, and (based on informed accounts) Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who neither likes campaign finance regulation nor anything to make it easy on citizens.

From The Washington Post ::
In one of the most controversial quirks in election law, candidates for Senate are not required to file their campaign-finance reports electronically. That means voters can't effectively find out how much and from whom their would-be senators have collected money until long after the election -- too late for them to act.

A growing number of senators and public-interest groups have been working for years to change this rule. They contend that it's only reasonable that senators should be required to file their disclosures electronically -- just as candidates for the House and the presidency do. In that way voters can easily see within 24 hours via the Internet what the candidates are spending and from whom they are getting their funds.

As it is, almost all senators and Senate candidates deliver their reports on paper (even though those reports are written on computers). The paper filings are laboriously scanned and then key-punched into an electronic system, a procedure that often takes six weeks to finish and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

After the reports are submitted to the Secretary of the Senate (often well past published deadlines), they are placed onto the Federal Election Commission's Web site in a page-by-page format. The listings are not searchable, which makes it almost impossible for anyone to glean useful information. Think of the process like rummaging through thousands of disorderly papers in a very large box.

The net result: Senators have insulated themselves from criticism that stems from their very important, end-of-campaign donations because they have denied voters accessible information when it would be most useful.
We're going to let the RedStaters take care of calling Sens. Lott and McConnell while we focus on our side of the aisle. Our goal is to get the rest of the Democrats on the Rules and Administration Committee on board, starting with Sen. Chris Dodd, who as our ranking member of the Committee needs to be doing more to push this through.
Here's your phone numbers:

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT): (202) 224-2823

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV): (202) 224-3954

Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI): (202) 224-3934

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA): (202) 224-3841

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY): (202) 224-6542

Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN): (202) 224-3244

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE): (202) 224-6551

Of those seven, Sen. Dodd is the key, so if you can only make one call, make it to his office. Call today - be polite, and tell them that you read the article in the Washington Post, and that you want them to co-sponsor and support S. 1508. This is bipartisan, obvious legislation to bring the Senate in line with everyone else regulated by campaign finance law, and to bring it into the 21st century. It's time for a vote on S. 1508.