Remember to multiply each dollar amount by 25.32This is a note I got today from a Member of Congress who is very active on the issues surrounding campaign finance reform, how plutocrats buy influence over politicians and what we can do to stop that:
Dear Howie:ActBlue charges 3.95% for contributions. They have now posted their top "contributors" to their "technical services" in 2016, meaning their take on contributions at their website. This tells us who raised how much on ActBlue in 2016, by multiplying these numbers by 25.32:https://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtedetail_contribs.php?ein=270160261&cycle=2016In terms of small donors on ActBlue, Bernie outraised the entire Democratic Party by 4 to 1. "End Citizens United" outraised the other "liberal" groups combined.Sincerely…
Before publishing, I decided to check that out with a very reliable source at ActBlue itself, someone absolutely in a position to know:
Hey Howie—Because ActBlue is a conduit, we file our own FEC reports and file every contribution in and back out. It’s a lot of data but it’s the most accurate. If you’re looking for data, I’d point you there.Open Secrets doesn’t pull from our reports but from the filed reports that candidates and committees file. They do need to report the processing fees that we collect so the numbers are usually in the right ballpark but can be messed up if a candidate makes a mistake on their filing, etc.If what you’re trying to figure out is how much Bernie raised, we don’t talk about candidate and committee numbers as a policy. But Bernie’s presidential committee publicly reported about $225 million being raised and he also was very public about nearly all of that coming via ActBlue in $27 chunks. It is true that he holds the title for being the biggest committee through ActBlue so far.Not every committee uses ActBlue or small dollar donors for all their fundraising, so any numbers you’re pulling from us only relate to ActBlue and might not tell the whole fundraising story. If you’re looking for holistic campaign finance numbers, I’ll always suggest the FEC database as your best bet.Good luck!
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