U.S. Rep. Becca Balint wants to see more transparency around small-dollar donations to political candidates.
The first-term member of Congress announced on Tuesday her plans to introduce a bill in the U.S. House which would charge the Federal Election Commission with establishing rules to govern how campaigns publicly disclose the number of donors who give $200 or less to support federal candidates.
The relatively newfound importance of small-dollar donations in political campaigning is a good thing, Balint told reporters at a Tuesday afternoon press conference in Montpelier — as opposed to campaigns relying heavily on large contributions from wealthy donors or corporations and special interest groups. Voters contributing $5 or $10 to candidates has “democratized the process,” she said, and helped voters feel connected to candidates.
“The problem is, the current campaign finance regulations do not include rules that govern small-dollar donation disclosure,” Balint said. “,” Balint said. “And some campaigns, unfortunately, have used deceptive tactics to inflate their small-dollar donor numbers.”
Of the 5 million individual donations to federal candidates in the first quarter of 2024, two-thirds were for $20 or less, Balint said.
FEC rules require campaigns to report the names of donors and the amount donated for all contributions of $200 or more. Balint’s bill wouldn’t mandate that level of detail on smaller individual contributions, as she contended that could have a chilling effect on small donations. Rather, her bill calls for standardizing how the number of those donations are counted and reported.
It’s a problem when campaigns are dishonest about the true origins of those donations, Balint said. Because campaigns often point to small-dollar donors as a signifier of grassroots support, voters can be misled about candidates’ popularity or what they stand for.
She pointed to the recent case of North Dakota’s Republican Gov. Doug Burgum. During his unsuccessful 2024 presidential campaign, Burgum offered donors $20 Visa gift cards in exchange for donating $1 to his campaign, NPR reported at the time.
The motivation for Burgum’s gift card scheme, according to NPR, was to entice enough individual donors to support his campaign to qualify for a Republican presidential primary debate in 2023. The debate organizers required participants to have received individual contributions from 40,000 donors from at least 20 states. Burgum’s Visa gift card offer was extended to the first 50,000 donors who participated.
It’s that kind of deceit that Balint hopes to crack down on with her bill, she told reporters.
At Tuesday’s press conference, she was flanked by Vermont’s Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas and Attorney General Charity Clark, both Democrats, who offered their support for the bill. Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, also joined.
Balint’s bill, if passed, would issue guidance to campaigns for federal office on how to accurately disclose to the public the number of small-dollar donors who contribute to their campaigns. Such rules would be enforceable by the FEC. The bill would also charge the commission with studying the issue to recommend further legislation, if it deems it necessary.
Balint, herself, has faced questions over campaign finance ethics. Former cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman Fried and his allies contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Balint’s first run for Congress. Bankman Fried has since pled guilty to campaign finance fraud. Balint has not faced charges for receiving those contributions.
On Tuesday, she told reporters it “was a very scarring experience for me to go through,” and has shaped her perspective on campaign finance law.
“When you’re in the midst of a congressional campaign, you’ve got tons of donations coming in throughout the day. It’s very difficult to monitor all of those things,” Balint said. “You have dark actors who are — whether it’s contributing directly to a campaign, or whether they’re contributing through a (political action committee) that is doing an independent expenditure — that you have no control over.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Becca Balint announces new bill to crack down on dishonest small-dollar campaign donations.