Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue and found that a large number of suspicious and untraceable donations were processed by the platform.
The investigation into ActBlue, which began in 2023, previously resulted in the online fundraising platform for Democratic candidates requiring donors to provide their “CVV” codes on the back of their credit cards in order to make a contribution. Paxton is still warning against ActBlue, however, contending that the site has received donations from those using false identities.
Paxton now says that it appears donations are “systematically being made using false identities, through untraceable payment methods” and sent a petition to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) calling on the entity to adopt new rules to safeguard elections. “Certain platforms appear to facilitate straw donor transactions, where a contributor disguises his identity by attributing his contribution to another, unaware person,” Paxton wrote, also highlighting that “prepaid cards are a favorite tool of fraudsters.”
“Notably, however, one of the most prominent online contribution platforms—ActBlue—submitted comments to the Commission encouraging it not to adopt regulations for prepaid cards that would have hampered this potential fraud,” the petition to the FEC from Paxton goes on to say. “If not corrected by the FEC, bad actors can—with trivial ease—illegally funnel foreign money into American elections, exceed political contribution limits, and more,” a press release from Paxton states.
Paxton also noted that his investigation reaffirmed public reporting on ActBlue, which found that the names of people on fixed incomes, who say they did not donate on the platform, were recorded as donors.
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“These contributions are being made in such high volume that, even without investigation, it strains credulity to believe they were legitimately made by the person whose name was provided as being the contributor,” Paxton said of these cases in his petition before highlighting the results of his investigation.
“Attorney General Paxton has independently corroborated that the public allegations about straw contributions appear true. Namely, many persons’ names have been used to make hundreds of unique contributions totaling many thousands of dollars per year,” the petition reads. “In many instances, contributions are made in these peoples’ names literally multiple times per day, almost every single day of the year.”
The redacted petition sent by Paxton to the FEC also requests that new amendments are added to existing policies, namely that political committees be required to “implement procedures ensuring that identities provided by donors match the information that the issuer of the donor’s payment card has on file.” It also urges the FEC to create an amendment establishing that political committees are out of compliance “with its obligation to maintain adequate records to verify donor identities if the committee accepts certain types of prepaid cards.”
“Our investigation into ActBlue has uncovered facts indicating that bad actors can illegally interfere in American elections by disguising political donations,” Paxton noted. “It is imperative that the FEC close off the avenues we have identified by which foreign contributions or contributions in excess of legal limits could be unlawfully funneled to political campaigns, bypassing campaign finance regulations and compromising our electoral system.”
