Should US senators and Senate candidates start filing their campaign finance reports electronically, as House members and presidential candidates already do?

Yes

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by Blackberry Evers

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Yes they should:

The current process under which Senate candidates disclose donor lists is absurdly antiquated. It is a mockery of the U.S. political system. The current system is that Senate candidates print out and then deliver or mail the lists to the Senate disclosure unit. The unit then scans the documents and emails them to the FEC. The FEC then hires a company to retype the lists and turn them into an electronic form. The company then emails the FEC the lists and the FEC puts them online - a process that can take a long time and costs taxpayers a lot of money. (See Dan Morain's article "Senators move donor disclosures at a snail's pace" in the LA Times for more).

It is actually easier for everyone involved for Senate candidates to just file the lists electronically. Candidates have all the information already in electronic form - of course they do. The reason for the system is that it creates distance between actions and donations. This distance lessens the political effect that may occur from donations from sketchy characters (e.g., uber-rich special interests). Further, if candidates can delay the reports until after the election, voters concerned about who's donating don't have the information to make informed electoral choices. This assumes that voters actually care about all this; or if they already assume that the system is beyond repair.

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