Lebanese elections use the “block vote” for multi-candidate lists with a confessional requirement. That is, the list in each multi-member electoral district that obtains the most votes wins ALL of the seats in the district, which makes for high stakes in each district. The confessional requirement is that for a a given district, each multi-candidate [...]

President Correa’s election campaign was fined by the Consejo Nacional Electoral for a broadcast on government TV which featured a cover of the Beatles’ Hey Jude and displayed a Correa campaign poster int he background. Latinnews.com ($) writes:
Correa claimed that the campaign was being fined for “three seconds of a broadcast” in which a singer had [...]

Ecuador has elections coming up, in April. The official campaign period begins in 3 weeks. Candidates are collecting money through the internet and through public events like bingos and raffles. Opponents to President Correa, who is running again, are worried that he will have too much of an advantage by way of the state. But [...]

In the wake of allegations that shadow minister Osborne received large contributions from a wealthy Russian, the government seeks to upgrade and tighten enforcement of the restriction on foreign political donations, currently illegal under British law. The Home Secretary will attempt to add the provisions to “Political Parties and Elections Bill, currently on its way [...]

Current law prohibits donations from businesses that receive contracts from the state and gambling. The Health Minister is proposing the changes this week, after the connections that have emerged in recent months involving (legal) drug companies, illegal drugs, and contributions to President Cristina Kircher’s campaign. Story at Clarin (spanish).

Jeff Zeleny at the NYTimes Blog reports:
Senator Barack Obama, as he becomes his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, is starting to exert his authority over the Democratic National Committee. A first step? New fund-raising guidelines.
Mr. Obama is announcing today that the D.N.C. will no longer accept contributions from federal lobbyists or political action committees, which follows [...]

Latinnews.com($) reports: “On 21 April the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) ordered two TV ads to be taken off the air.” PAN and a group were alleged to have gone too far in their depiction of former presidential candidate Lopez Obrador, and that the latter “had broken the law which bans unregistered groups from attacking political [...]

From Honolulu Advisor:  
A pilot program to publicly finance Big Island County Council elections could be in danger after the state Senate amended the proposal yesterday to also soften restrictions on corporate campaign contributions.
Linking the conflicting ideas in the same bill could poison negotiations if the bill moves to a state House and Senate conference [...]

Boston.com reports:
MONTPELIER, Vt.—Gov. Jim Douglas on Friday vetoed the Legislature’s latest effort to limit the influence of big money in politics, as well as an instant-runoff voting bill.

Douglas said his veto of the campaign finance bill was mainly due to his opposition to a provision limiting the amounts political parties can donate to campaigns. The [...]

Mentioning short campaign periods and limits on expenditures in privately-owned media, LatioMadrid writes that the rules governing political campaigns are more “clear” and “strict” in Spain than in Latin America, and thus that campaigns are less expensive. They fail to mention that information about campaign donations and expenditures are far more forthcoming in several Latin American countries (e.g. [...]

From the Columbia Tribune Politics Blog:
The Missouri Senate gave initial approval by a voice vote Wednesday to legislation that would rescind caps on campaign contributions. … The bill would also require campaigns accepting donations of $5,000 or more to list the contribution online within 48 hours.
 

La Gaceta offers this editorial (spanish) about the expenditure reports – and the Federal Justice’s (JF) job in analyzing and regulating them – for last October’s presidential and legislative elections in Argentina. They say that the JF’s work is cut out for them given that a couple of candidates, including the new president Cristina Fernandez, overspent the allowed [...]

In discussions about casino licenses, proposals have been made to ban political donations from casinos and their management, reports EMOL (spanish).

After months of controversy and heated opposition, the Electoral Finance Bill passed into law today. The provisions according to the summary at the NZ Herald are:
Any group or person wishing to campaign for or against a particular candidate or political party, or policies held by a party, will fall under the third-parties regime…
…will have to [...]

This week Feingold and collaborators released more information about their designs to resurrect the public financing system for presidential candidates, reports The Trail. The details:
The legislation would dramatically increase the amount of matching funds candidates received during the presidential primaries. Right now, candidates who opt to accept public financing (only John Edwards and Tom Tancredo [...]

The BBC reports:
Labour general secretary Peter Watt has resigned following the revelation that a property developer made donations to the party via three associates.
…Under the law, those making donations on behalf of others must give details of who is providing the money.
Watt said he was unaware of the precise reporting requirements at the time of [...]

In response to allegations from the the Supreme Electoral Tribunal that they accepted money from impermissible sources during last year’s electoral campaign, the PSDB and its former presidential candidate argue that their accounts were “absolutely” regular, Folha reports (Portuguese). If they are found guilty, the PSDB would lose its free tv time for next year.

Elections Canada is currently in a lawsuit with the Tories about “in and outs” – transfers from parties to candidates who are then invoiced to pay for media advertisements for the party, although the ads may have taglines that say the message was paid for by the candidates. At issue is whether these should be [...]

The Electoral Commission issued this handbook on the new regulations in Northern Ireland. Based on the UK’s 2000 Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, the new regulations have a list of persmissible donors. For N.I., however, the enumerated list includes a variety of Irish organizations (p. 8 of handbook):

3.4 PPERA specifies a list of individuals [...]

The Belfast Telegraph reports an interview with the UK’s Electoral Commission’s new regulations regarding political party finance in Northern Ireland. In brief, parties are now required to disclose their sources of income, which can only come from particular sources in the UK and in Ireland. There are no contribution limits and none of the information collected by [...]