Federal Election Commission kills anonymous donor proposal

The Federal Election Commission on Thursday defeated a proposal — introduced by a Donald Trump-nominated commissioner — that would have allowed some political donors to remain anonymous.

All three of the six-member FEC’s Democratic commissioners were unwilling to adopt a temporary measure proposed by Commissioner Allen Dickerson, which Raw Story first reported earlier this month.

Dickerson wanted to give any political donor the right to request the speedy removal of identifying information — such as one’s name, address, employer and occupation. He also wanted his FEC colleagues to quickly approve a temporary process for donors to withhold disclosure while the commission gave full consideration to the issue.

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Dickerson noted that the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and subsequent amendments were passed long before the internet, when donor information was available only on hard copies of documents. The FEC now operates a robust and easily accessible database for searching public information. Changing the rule, he said, would give “ordinary Americans” the same chance to protect information as the “well connected.”

Critics, though, panned the idea as a threat to democracy by going much too far to address whatever threats and harassment exist.

“Such a rule could well eviscerate the one element of today’s campaign finance law still intact: disclosure of who is paying for our lawmakers,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a non-profit, non-partisan consumer advocacy group. “Democracy depends on transparency of money in politics. It is imperative that voters know the financial interests behind each and every candidate in order to evaluate their merit.”

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Scott Greytak, Director of Advocacy for Transparency International U.S., a group whose purpose is to “end corruption,” said: "As democracy faces its biggest test yet around the world, it is difficult to believe that the world's oldest democracy is even considering further eroding the public's right to know who is influencing their elections,” said “To ensure that the United States can continue to lead the global fight for democracy with credibility, we strongly urge the FEC to reject this proposal."

Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat and a commissioner since 2002, said the FEC has sparingly granted exceptions to current transparency regulations and should not automatically fast-track donor requests to withhold their identifying information just because they signed an affidavit indicating public release of that information could harm them.

“What if the affidavit claims the person is going to be harassed by aliens who are going to abduct them if their address is made public?” she said during the meeting. “It seems to me we should not assume every affidavit will be substantiated. In the past, we’ve required more than a simple affidavit with a claim in it.”

Weintraub and fellow Democrats Dara Lindenbaum and Shana Broussard voted against the proposal. Dickerson and fellow Republicans Sean Cooksey, the commission chair, and Trey Trainor voted in favor. The 3-3 tie killed the measure; passage required four votes.

Two of the three Democrats on the commission, however, agreed that the federal government’s decades-old political transparency regulations should be reconsidered in some form, such as whether the federal government should be publishing individual political donors’ home street addresses, which is the current practice.

The FEC will now ask for public comment on ideas to “withhold, redact, or modify contributors’ identifying information.”

Lindenbaum said donors’ street names and house numbers, currently public information, should not be disclosed. She cited the danger to people who haven’t disclosed their address on, say, a dating app, or find themselves in a domestic abuse situation.

Lindenbaum said that change would “continue to uphold the Act’s important transparency mission while also protecting individuals’ personal safety.”

The FEC is charged with regulating and enforcing the nation’s campaign finance laws. It can issue civil penalties to those who violate them. FEC commissioners, however, are often at philosophical odds amid high-profile cases and often deadlock or otherwise fail to find common ground.

Founded in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the FEC is a bipartisan agency where no more than three commissioners may come from one political party.

Trump nominated Dickerson to the FEC in 2020, and the U.S. Senate confirmed him in December of that year. Dickerson served as FEC chairman — a one-year, rotating posting — in 2022.

Prior to joining the FEC, Dickerson worked as legal director for the Institute for Free Speech, a nonprofit think tank that advocates against most campaign finance regulations.

In 2023, Dickerson advocated making it more difficult for the FEC to investigate alleged campaign finance violations, The Intercept reported.