House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R-WI) demanded the Federal Election Commission (FEC) launch an “emergency rulemaking process” to require political campaigns to “verify the card verification value (CVV) of donors who contribute online.”
According to Steil, the Democrats’ ActBlue fundraising platform contains a “loophole” allowing the party to raise money from illegal donations.
In a letter to the FEC, Steil wrote that his investigation into the fundraising platform follows “widespread allegations of fraudulent donations being reported to the FEC by ActBlue, one of the largest fundraising platforms in the country.”
While the “vast majority of online transactions, including a donation to most political campaigns and to other large fundraising platforms, require a CVV number to reduce fraud and prevent unlawful foreign transactions,” Steil wrote, “ActBlue’s donor procedures are painfully outside the norm, and an emergency rulemaking is required to address them.”
ActBlue’s practices “practices invite the possibility of foreign donations, and allowing political committees to accept donations from gift cards or other prepaid credit cards promote the appearance and the very real possibility that straw donors are making campaign donations with funds provided by another person or an unlawful donor including a foreign national,” he added.
“These issues present a serious loophole to the transparency and integrity of the campaign donation process, and an emergency rulemaking is required to rectify these issues,” Steil concluded.
The letter comes as some have speculated that ActBlue may be violating federal campaign finance laws.
ActBlue helped Kamala Harris raise nearly $50 million in campaign donations within hours of her presidential run announcement.
