Super PACs take brash new steps to hide their donors

[DonViejo]

Outside groups are using loopholes and sometimes just ignoring the law to keep voters in the dark before key elections.

By MAGGIE SEVERNS 08/17/2018 05:06 AM EDT

Mere days after it sprang to life in a burst of paperwork, the new super PAC Red and Gold spent nearly $1 million attacking Rep. Martha McSally, a battleground GOP Senate candidate favored by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. But first, Red and Gold took a step to hide its tracks.

Red and Gold sent a brief note to the Federal Election Commission informing regulators that it would file monthly reports showing who financed the group. Its first disclosure “will be due on September 20,” the super PAC wrote — more than three weeks after McSally’s Arizona Republican primary is over.

It wasn’t the first super PAC to pull that trick: The scheme is part of a sharp escalation in super PACs avoiding reporting requirements and keeping voters in the dark about their funding until after key elections. Two other groups aired more than $3 million in attack ads in West Virginia’s GOP Senate primary this year and used the same method to dodge the FEC until after the May 8 vote. Overall, at least two dozen super PACs that spent millions of dollars in recent elections used loopholes to get out of revealing their donors, according to information compiled by the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog organization.

It’s a sign that political operatives see more risk in revealing the big-money meddlers in congressional elections than in pushing the boundaries of campaign finance law — and many of the groups pushing the boundaries are aligned with Democrats, the party most associated with complaints about undisclosed “dark money” affecting elections.

more
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/17/super-pacs-hidden-donors-disclosures-741795

[SWBTATTReg]

1. I swear, why don't they just put a price tag on each Congressional seat, and be ...

done w/ it? Crap, by the time all 535 seats have been sold off, the national debt will have been paid off.