Campaign finance disclosure laws may typically have two purposes: to enforce campaign laws (spending limits) and to provide information to voters about the sources of campaign contributions. Of the world’s democracies, Finland has probably the set of laws most expressly designed only for the latter purpose: only winners (members of parliament) must disclose their sources of income, they [...]

The governor of Vermont vetoed today a campaign finance reform that would have introduced new contribution limits (after the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the previous Vermont limits) because, he writes in his veto message, because the limits would unfairly benefit incumbents.
The governor’s veto message, which appears at the Burlington Free Press, states:
…The proposed individual and [...]

According to the LA Times’ report and editorial, the lobby reform bill that passed the US House last week included provisions aimed to further transparency in DC by mandating disclosure of contributors and amounts in the bundling of donations done by lobbyists (and of the projects lobbyists want inserted into bills). It didn’t include a [...]

The Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia published an op/ed in yesterday’s Jakarta Post urging the adoption of regulations to enable and enforce transparency in Indonesian political finance. They write:   
Although attempts have been made to improve the system during the lead up to the last two elections, party financing in Indonesia remains fundamentally problematic, untouched by reform and lacking in [...]

11 months ago, El Salvador’s ARENA (National Republican Alliance) – the party of the president and the second largest party in Congress – launched a new fashion line, including t-shirts, hoodies, and bikinis, all in the party’s red, white, and blue, to raise routine, non-electoral money. Sergio Arauz at El Faro.net (in spanish) reports that [...]

Latinnews.com ($) reports:
On 22 May the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) fined all the registered political parties varying sums for failing to follow the rules in the 2006 elections.
The fines were nothing like those dished out after the 2000 elections when the defeated Partido Revolucionario Institucional was crippled after it was convicted of trying to use [...]

Kendea Jones at the Bahama Journal writes that there seems to be support for the public disclosure of campaign finance and for spending limits after the recent parliamentary elections, albeit support held over from the 2002 campaign where demand for reform followed revelations of an (unfulfilled) quid-pro-quo donations by an Iranian businessman to the PLP.

A conference attended by the European Commission and Council of Europe on transparency in political parties’ finances is underway in Moldova. Moldpres News Agency reports:   

The importance of transparency and enforcement of the legislation were the main aspects highlighted in the welcoming speeches by participants in the conference, Promoting Transparency and Responsibility of Political Parties in [...]

The BBC reports:
Talks have begun between Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems to try to reach agreement on how parties are funded.
Sir Hayden Phillips, who published his review of party funding in March and is chairing the meeting, said there was “broad agreement” about most issues.
But recommendations on capping spending on campaigns and individual [...]

The International Election Observation Mission, “a joint undertaking of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR), the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the European Parliament (EP)” offers a preliminary report on the May 12th parliamentary elections in Armenia with [...]

…in Brazilian elections for the past 15 years. The study by the OPB reached the estimate by totaling the amount in corruption scandals over the period. Marco Aurélio, president of Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal said the figure might be higher if the the study took into consideration on-going investigations. More at Agora MS (Portuguese).

Radio Jamaica reports:
An overwhelming majority of Jamaicans would reject any proposal to increase taxes to provide state funding of political parties.
That is the finding of a national poll conducted by Market Research Services for the Electoral Office of Jamaica.
While 71 per cent of the respondents agreed that the Government should provide [...]

While Bertie Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach, is busy celebrating the re-devolution of authority in Northern Ireland, he’s also fending off allegations of financial improprieties in the 90’s, which have reached a fever pitch because the parliamentary campaign is underway (the election is May 24) and the Progressive Democrats, the coalition-partners of Ahern’s Fianna Fail, want [...]

Today’s Zaman reports on the electoral subsidy that is being disbursed to parties competing for the July 22 parliamentary elections. The report mentions the annual subsidy distributed in January as well as the electoral subsidy being distributed now, as well as the various threshold in place to determine which parties receive funding, which is relevant [...]

An opinion by Kipngeno Cheruiyot in the Sunday Times of Kenya writes in favor of public financing of parties in Kenya and particularly the proposal of the National Democratic Institute, which has been doing a study of political finance in Africa. The proposal sounds as though it is taken from Voting with Dollars (reviewed here), [...]

Thanks in part to IFES, the Democratic Republic of Georgia has a rather good system of campaign finance disclosure (especially given that it was used in its first post-Rose Revolution election), with easy to access information on the internet (here). Of course, that does not mean they are immune to problems of campaign finance. Parties are [...]

The race for the presidential primary has begun so early and the sums of money raised and spent so great that there are renewed calls to overhaul the regulations in… the Dominican Republic. Yes, the story is not unique to the United States.
Juan Bolivar Diaz at Hoy Digital writes about the calls by some to [...]

26 of Brazil’s 28 parties had their annual financial reports turned in by the deadline today. They show the PT and the PSDB in the red at Br$47 million and Br$17.8 million, respectively. By contrast, the DEM (for Democrats, the former PFL) and the PMDB have some money to spare.