So inspired by this article on National Review:
I figured this would be an interesting policy discussion on if all political donations should be public knowledge, and if so, why and what limits, and if not, why and why not?
In deciding to tweet out the names and occupations of max-level donors to the Trump campaign, Representative Joaquin Castro (D., Texas), the brother of Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro, simply made the dangerous logic of our modern campaign-finance laws more explicit.
The donors singled out by Representative Castro are mostly ordinary people — realtors, retirees, store owners, the owner of a barbecue restaurant. These private citizens were singled out by Castro, who accused them of “fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as invaders.” Set aside the truth value of the statement, which predictably and dishonestly ignores the difference between legal and illegal immigration, Castro’s ability to harass random donors to his political opponents is not a bug of our current campaign-finance laws but a feature. We can fix that “feature” only if America reforms its donor-privacy laws.
The 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act force every candidate for public office to publicly disclose not just the names but also the addresses and employment information of donors who give more than $200 to his or her campaign. In many states, the dollar amount is even lower. The purported purpose of this measure was to identify those people who might use their money to exert undue influence on the democratic process. Whatever the wisdom of such an act might have been in 1974, its authors didn’t contemplate a world where such information would be publicly available to anyone with the click of a mouse.
I figured this would be an interesting policy discussion on if all political donations should be public knowledge, and if so, why and what limits, and if not, why and why not?