Michael Beckel

Will 2017 be the year the Senate fully embraces the digital revolution? Sure, Sens use Twitter, Facebook and even Snapchat. But they’re strictly analogue when disclosing information about their campaign finances. That’s where a new bill from Sen Jon Tester (D-MN) comes in.

Dubbed the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, Sen Tester’s legislation would require US Senate candidates to file their campaign finance reports electronically like all other federal candidates — not on paper, as is the current practice. “It’s hard to say this is a bad bill," Sen Tester said. "It saves money and adds disclosure, so what could be bad about that?” The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that taxpayers would save about $500,000 a year if senators electronically filed these reports. Nearly all federal candidates and committees began electronically filing their campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission in 2001. But the Senate was exempted from the e-filing requirement.

Just when we learned what “Citizens United” and “super PACs” were all about, the Supreme Court has again roiled the world of campaign finance, voting 5-4 to allow even more money into a political process that is pretty well saturated with it.

So what does it all mean? In essence, the Court said that the government cannot prevent citizens from giving campaign contributions to as many different candidates and political parties as they want. Previously, they were capped under the “aggregate limit” rule.

Does that mean donors can give a candidate as much as they want? No. The maximum amount one donor can give each candidate is still $2,600 per election, or $5,200 counting the primary and general election. The maximum contribution to a national party committee is still $32,400, and the maximum PAC contribution is still $5,000.

But the rules have changed since the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, when aggregate limits were introduced. Now, if one donor used a network of affiliated PACs to fund a single federal candidate, he or she would be breaking the law. Candidates can now more easily band together and raise big money from the same individuals through legal entities called “joint fundraising committees.” These committees let contributors write a single large check to an umbrella group, which, in turn, splits the money up among several beneficiaries.

Millions of Americans e-filed their income taxes, but when senators submitted required reports about their campaign fundraising and expenses, most ignored computers in favor of paper.

Just 21 lawmakers voluntarily e-filed copies of their first-quarter reports to meet the filing deadline. That’s about a three-fold increase from 2011 -- although it’s far from a majority in the august body that has long cherished its old-school traditions. Neither senators nor Senate candidates are required to e-file their campaign finance reports -- unlike the thousands of political action committees, presidential candidates or their colleagues in the US House of Representatives.

Currently, senators must submit their campaign finance reports on paper to the secretary of the Senate, where they are scanned and then forwarded to the FEC. In a process that lasts weeks, the agency subsequently prints the documents and delivers them to a private contractor, which performs the data entry work necessary to make the information searchable and sortable in electronic databases. A bipartisan bill sponsored by Tester, however, would change that. The switch would save taxpayers about $500,000 a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.