Senate committee chairman Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota will enact legislation Monday banning political campaigns from routing online donors to recurring donations by default. This practice has attracted criticism for tricking backers into giving inadvertent gifts, sometimes in the thousands of dollars in total.
The planned introduction of the law follows a non-partisan recommendation by the Bundestag Electoral Commission that Congress should restrict the practice of pre-checking boxes that automatically encourage donors to make repeated donations. The FEC unanimously voted 6-0 in favor of recommending the change after a New York Times investigation found that contributors’ refunds and fraud claims against former President Donald J. Trump rose.
Ms. Klobuchar, who heads the rule committee that oversees the administration of the federal elections, calls the draft law the RECUR law to “save every participant from unwanted repetitions”. She currently has only Democratic co-sponsors, including Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who is the second-largest Democrat in the Senate leadership and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But Ms. Klobuchar said she was confident she could attract Republican co-sponsors after the FEC’s three Republican commissioners joined the Democrats in recommending the ban on the practice – a rare moment of agreement at an agency, often driven by a party-political deadlock is defined.
“We have to make sure that we encourage people who can only make small contributions so that their voices are heard but not exploited,” said Ms. Klobuchar in an interview.
In a statement, Mr Durbin said he was “proud” to introduce the bill with Ms. Klobuchar. “In a bipartisan recommendation, the Bundestag Electoral Commission called on Congress to take action to stop the fundraising practices that were outrageously used by the Trump campaign and that led contributors to recurring payments,” he said.
The Times investigation found that Mr. Trump’s cash shortage political operation had his online employees become unintentional repeat donors by checking a box to withdraw additional donations every week last fall. Their inquiries also included a second pre-checked box labeled a “money bomb”. Over time, the campaign added text, sometimes in bold or capital letters, that obscured the opt-out language. Soon banks and credit card companies saw a flurry of fraud complaints.
Overall, the Trump operation with the Republican Party reimbursed donors who donated through the online processing site WinRed $ 122.7 million – more than 10 percent of each dollar raised. In contrast, the online reimbursement rate for President Biden’s campaign with the party at ActBlue, the corresponding Democratic processing agency, was 2.2 percent.
While the practice of pre-checking boxes is now far more common among Republicans, Democrats have previously used the tactic as well. Some prominent Democratic Party committees continue to use it. And Mr Trump continued the practice in his post-presidency period.
Ms. Klobuchar’s legislation would require all political committees to be given “consent” to receive donations, and it specifically states that pre-checked boxes do not meet this requirement.
“If you have experience and look at this, you know that it is just pure fraud,” said Ms. Klobuchar of the pre-examination practice, “and it is not something that should be allowed in the future.”
Ms. Klobuchar said the FEC’s unanimous vote was “very helpful” in providing impetus for their legislation. This is a stand-alone bilateral bill, but it could be incorporated into other election-related laws. The Democrats are pushing for legislation that would result in a major overhaul of the elections, but the bill’s prospects remain bleak.
