Transparency about the sources of election funding is a pillar of campaign finance regulation. The disclosure rules in place today were mostly crafted in the aftermath of Watergate.¹ Since 1980, candidates, parties, and other political committees have been required to report identifying information, including name and address, for every person who gives more than $200 in an election cycle. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) collects and publishes this information on its website. But the system provides too much information about some donors while leaving others completely hidden. Change is long overdue. This policy brief outlines reforms to improve federal campaign finance disclosure rules.

Public disclosure of campaign finance data has clear benefits to democracy: It helps fight corruption, and it provides voters useful information. Knowing who supports a politician helps voters predict what that candidate is likely to do in office. Transparency is especially important today because courts have struck down reasonable campaign finance regulations, like limits on independent expenditures, leading to an explosion in spending by super PACs and dark money organizations. These independent groups spent more than $4 billion on the 2024 election cycle, much of it coming from megadonors and wealthy special interests.² Since the election, President Donald Trump has raised an unprecedented amount of contributions from wealthy supporters, many of whom have sought favors from his administration, including policy concessions, high-level government jobs, and even presidential pardons.³ With so much big money influencing elections, it’s crucial that Americans at least know where it is coming from.

The campaign disclosure regime is riddled with loopholes. Since the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, dark money from groups that don’t reveal their donors has swelled. It reached a high of $1.9 billion in the 2024 cycle, nearly doubling the record from four years prior.⁴ And recent technological and cultural changes have led to a seismic shift in how people communicate. Election campaigns are increasingly conducted online in a media ecosystem that was unimaginable in 1980. Disclosure laws designed for the mass media of the 20th century have simply not kept up.

At the same time, there is increased risk that broad donor disclosure will have unintended consequences. The FEC is publishing personal information on more people than ever before. The internet has made it easier to access information about specific individuals. Political harassment and violence are on the rise. Together, these developments pose risks for individual privacy and safety.

Congress should enact commonsense solutions to ensure that the campaign finance system achieves the key benefits of disclosure without needless privacy risks that could discourage Americans’ political participation. Reforming the system should include the following:

• eliminating dark money spending by requiring all groups that spend on elections to disclose their large donors
• requiring disclosure of online political spending, including payments to influencers
• limiting public information about donors to name, state, city, zip code, occupation, and employer, leaving out street address
• raising the dollar threshold for donors to be identified in public data to $800 or more and indexing it to inflation
• making data that includes street addresses and information about small donors available for research under restrictions that prevent users from publishing any identifiable information

Disclosure reform should be part of a broader agenda for combating political corruption, which would include restoring campaign finance limits, banning political contributions from government contractors, and creating a more effective ethics watchdog.⁵ Together, these solutions would help restore Americans’ trust in the U.S. government.