Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Campaign Donations--Online?

One who is curious about the donors to the Vrakas or Dwyer campaign war-chests must do more than a little driving, digging, and pencil-and-paper work to come up with 'who did what to whom.'

It's a little easier for Statewide and National contests--there are good websites which are happy to name names and amounts.

But for local contests there's no easy way to get the records.

This should change. As long as the Legislature is in session, perhaps one of those fine folks could draft a bill requiring that ALL candidates for elective office in Wisconsin MUST maintain Web-accessible campaign donation records, updated not less than every other business day.

The Wisconsin Election Commission could even provide the webpage.

In addition, the Election Commission should maintain a webpage which lists ALL "outside group" activity--and those "outside groups," whether PAC's or other, must list their officers and directors, under criminal penalty.

Should be interesting to see if BagManJimbo vetoes this, too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here are the county reports:

http://www.waukeshacounty.gov/departments/clerk/Special%20Election_Campaign%20Finance.asp

I have no idea about the reports for outside groups.