January 14, 2008

The Fight for Increased Transparency in Senate Campaign Finance Reports

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While presidential and House candidates file their campaign finance reports electronically, Senate candidates file theirs on paper. It takes the Federal Elections Commission months to process these paper records and put them online, where the public can see them. The upshot: voters don’t know who donated to Senate candidates in the last three months of their campaigns. Did Republicans fund Joe Lieberman’s last minute push, for example? You could only find out after you’ve voted.

The good folks at the Sunlight Foundation have identified which Senators are working for more transparency (primarily Russ Feingold) and which ones are working for less (primarily John Ensign). And they also know how you can take action. Check out their web video.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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