Merkel’s grand coalition is moving to raise the amount of money available for the party subsidy by 20M Euro to $153 Euro. Critics and opponents (which include the Greens) say that the proposal is unjustified, even if parties have fewer members and/or electoral turnout is lower, as some allege is the underlying motivation. Lower turnout [...]

I dont know when else I’ll see another story on campaign finance in Trinidad & Tobago, so:  
Minister in the Finance Ministry Christine Sahadeo has said that the $100,000 a plate fund raising dinner with Prime Minister Patrick Manning was in keeping with the transparency procedures of the ruling party.
The XE Currency Converter puts that [...]

A well-known lawyer was indicted by the Department of Justice for soliciting 60 “straw donors” – or people reimbursed for their contributions to a candidate’s campaign (in this case, presidential hopeful John Edwards) by someone in order so that they, the ultimate benefactor, can skirt contribution limits. Neither the PRNewswire nor the AP story say [...]

The UN and IDEA calculate that the October subnational elections in Colombia will cost at least 2.6B pesos reports El Espectador (spanish).
This seems to me more than a little off, even considering that many of the local elections will be cheap. Depending on the online currency converter I use, 2.6B pesos is between US$1.2 -1.3 million. Since the [...]

See the LATimes report for more information, but here’s what they say are the basics about the bills:  
California lawmakers are proposing a trio of bills they say would update the state’s campaign finance laws and better recognize free speech rights, but several open-government groups are fighting the measures, fearing they would allow special interests [...]

The government has tabled the reform they introduced after loud complaints about the restrictions on third party campaigning, which was really the bulk of what was left in the already “watered down” proposal, Stuff.co reports.
An outcry has followed Labour’s tabling of the bill in Parliament, after lobby groups and unions realised that they would be [...]

An op-ed in Kenya’s Business Daily (at AllAfrica.com) worries about the potential consequences of a new tax break (up to ~US$13,700) for political donations: beyond reducing the state’s revenues, it may be ”misused for tax evasion, money laundering and as a back channel for sleazy campaign finance shenanigans….” 
The fact that the entire donation can be deducted from one’s tax [...]