Campaign Finance

Established Fact Federal law does not require campaigns to itemize contributions below $200 aggregate per donor per cycle. This threshold creates a structural incentive to keep individual fraudulent transactions sub-threshold, rendering them invisible to public FEC disclosure. Citations 11 C.F.R. § 104.3(a)(4)(i) (specifying that authorized committees must report itemized individual contributions in Schedule A, Line […]

Established Fact ActBlue reported 15.3 million unique donors and over 165 million individual transactions in the 2020 cycle. This volume makes individual-transaction fraud detection and post-hoc audit exceptionally difficult without automated forensic tooling. Citations ActBlue, 2020 Year-End Report (Jan. 2021), https://actblue.com/updates/posts/2020-year-end-report

Established Fact During the 2020 federal election cycle ActBlue processed approximately $3.8 billion in total contributions — more than double its 2018 cycle total — creating an audit environment of exceptional complexity for regulators and recipient committees. Citations ActBlue, 2020 Year-End Report (Jan. 2021), https://actblue.com/updates/posts/2020-year-end-report OpenSecrets.org, ActBlue 2020 Cycle Summary, https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00401224

Established Fact ActBlue is registered with the FEC as a qualified non-connected committee (C00401224) and operates as a conduit fundraising platform, collecting and transmitting contributions to Democratic candidates while retaining a 3.95% processing fee per transaction. Citations FEC Committee Profile, ActBlue (C00401224), FEC.gov, https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00401224/ Presidential Memorandum, Investigation into Unlawful “Straw Donor” and Foreign Contributions in