The Diario de Salta (spanish) writes that there are too few employees/auditors to enforce campaign finance regulations that apply to the 685 registered political parties in the upcoming (November) elections.

The NZ Herald writes that the maintanence of high thresholds for anonymous donations ($10,000) is unjustified, and provides little gain to donors, that the limits on spending benefit Labour, and that third parties or independent entities are losers in restrictions on their expenditures:
The bill aims to control election finance through limits on permissible spending rather [...]

The BBC picks up a story that seems to be in the German press more than anywhere else. The “Paris lycees affair” was a scheme in Paris in which kickbacks were paid by a company to get commissions build schools. The money was divied up among political parties according to a set rule, not just [...]

The NYTimes writes that the compromise is all-but-assured of passage. The measure contains a number of provisions, including contribution limits to candidates and parties, a ban on contributions from lobbyists, and disclosure regarding the bundling of contributions. Some of these are:
The amount a donor can give a statewide candidate will be reduced from as much [...]

The Ministry of Justice has released a press statement about a reform bill introduced to parliament, which is available at the Scoop. It contains:
A key area for reform will be election expenses. There will also be much stricter rules on the involvement of third parties in election campaigns.
The Bill also introduces more stringent rules for [...]

The cash-for-peerages affair ends, and without any charges despite earlier indications that some higher-ups would be charged. The BBC’s roundup begins:
It lasted 16 months, cost £1 million, saw senior Downing Street aides arrested and even then prime minister, Tony Blair, interviewed by police.
There was one significant change to come of the whole affair, however: the [...]

Latinnews.com’s ($) report, “Guatemalan parties mask donors”, writes of parties missing their disclosure deadline:
Eleven of the 14 political parties registered for the 9 September general elections have not reported their funding sources to the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE). 
I doubt this is because like candidates here in the US, some Guatemalan parties want to delay their reports [...]

In California, the Sacramento Bee reports:
Assembly Bill 1430, which is awaiting a floor vote after safely clearing the Senate Elections Committee last week, would prohibit cities and counties from restricting how much political parties and committees can spend on so-called member communications, such as candidate endorsement lists, door hangers and mailers.
The bill was drafted by a [...]

Interview in the Jakarta Post about adopting accounting guidelines for political parties. Its header states:
With the 2009 general election nearing, political parties have been told to improve their financial records by having a transparent accounting system to prevent fiascoes like the transfer of illicit funds from the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry during the 2004 poll. [...]

John Cochran’s piece for CQ (and reprinted in the NYTimes) discusses the difficulties in determining whether regulation of campaign finance income and expenditure (beyond perhaps transparency) does any good. In a nutshell:
A problem with drawing such conclusions, though, is that in politics, it’s difficult, even impossible, to separate the effects of the campaign finance system from [...]

Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge made internationally famous for, among other things, bringing human rights charges against Chile’s Pinochet, recommended in his interview with La Jornada (spanish) that Mexico establish clear controls over the political finance of political parties and to establish free tv time for parties during elections. He also said he was not [...]

Afriquenlinge reports on a law passed into law two weeks ago today:
The new law provides that a political party must obtain at least 5 percent of the votes cast nationwide in the parliamentary elections and have at least 5 MPs elected at the national assembly, or 10 percent of votes in local elections, in order benefit [...]

Jack Beatty at The Atlantic wrote this short piece on the history of regulation and reform in the US, which ends with a quote from Justice Souter’s dissent in the Wisconsin Right to Life Case:
Looking back on the Sisyphean history of campaign reform, Souter observes that neither Congress nor the Court “have understood the corrupting influence [...]

Previous posts here have covered allegations that despite being on the books for 10 years, the implementation of disclosure regulations in the Dominican Republic have not been enforced by the the electoral authority, the Junta Central Electoral. This is in the news again this week (Listin Diaro and Clave Digital, both in spanish) as the [...]

So reports Newsday.com on the primaries in New Jersey. It contains:
“This is the largest increase that we’ve ever had in terms of primary spending, and it is by far the most expensive primary,” Frederick Herrmann, ….
In five districts, spending on the June primary was over $1 million. And big spending often meant winning too: Winners [...]

In the Mexican state of Zacatecas, the electoral authority is testing a new technique for controlling the amounts of spending and enforcing spending limits – they purchased all the television and radio time parties are allocated to use and prohibit parties from purchasing any media time by other means, be it with their state-provided or [...]