The U.S. House committee that oversees election laws advanced multiple bills Thursday to stop fraudulent campaign donations and foreign influence in elections.
Three of the Republican-led bills arose out of committee Chairman Bryan Steil’s, R-Wis., three-year investigation into online campaign fundraising platform ActBlue.
“Our current campaign finance laws were not written for the digital age,” Steil said during the Thursday markup. “Through our investigation, we’ve learned that fraudsters and foreign nationals could exploit the current system to make illegal campaign finance contributions. That’s an unacceptable vulnerability and we have an opportunity to fix it.”
Steil’s three-year investigation into ActBlue not only revealed the platform’s “weak” fraud prevention practices, but more importantly identified security gaps in America’s existing campaign financing laws.
To close those potential loopholes for fraud, the Campaign Finance Transparency Act would require political donations made via credit or debit card to include a CVV/CVC number, billing zip code, and a name that matches the name of the donor.
It would also prohibit political contributions via prepaid gift cards and require platforms to report all political donations, not just those over a certain dollar amount.
Contributions made from donors without a U.S. mailing address would require document verification to ensure that foreign actors are not using American identities to funnel money to preferred political candidates.
The other two bills sent to the House floor – the Preventing Foreign Interference in American Elections Act and the Stop Foreign Funds in Elections Act – aim to prevent foreign money from influencing how U.S. elections are conducted and what proposals make it to the ballot.