Baby Boosters! Big Money Bundlers Seeking Underage Contributors

The Washington Post reports on the new fundraising tactic of bundling campaign contributions from children:

Although campaign finance laws set a limit of $2,300 per donor per campaign, they do not explicitly bar donors based on age. And young donors abound in the fundraising reports filed by presidential contenders this year.

A supporter of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R), Susan Henken of Dover, Mass., wrote her own $2,300 check, and her 13-year-old son, Samuel, and 15-year-old daughter, Julia, each wrote $2,300 checks, for example. Samuel used money from his bar mitzvah and money he earned "dog sitting," and Julia used babysitting money to make the contributions, their mother said. "My children like to donate to a lot of causes. That's just how it is in my house," Henken said.

Just how much campaign cash is coming from children is uncertain -- the FEC does not require donors to provide their age. But the amount written by those identifying themselves as students on contribution forms has risen dramatically this year, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. During the first six months of the 2000 presidential campaign, students gave $338,464. In 2004, that rose to $538,936.

This year, the amount has nearly quadrupled, to $1,967,111.

"What's driving it is a desire by maxed-out donors to max out on their maxing out," said Fred Wertheimer, president of campaign finance reform organization Democracy 21, who sought, unsuccessfully, to outlaw child donations five years ago. "More often than not, you're dealing with people who are simply trying to circumvent the limits of what they can give."

Congress tried to outlaw political contributions from those under age 18 as part of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002, but the Supreme Court struck down that provision as an infringement on the constitutional rights of minors. With that ruling in mind, the Federal Election Commission wrote new regulations two years ago that tried to balance what it considered a legitimate desire among some children to make political contributions against the possibility that parents would seek to pad their donations by funneling money through children.

The regulations established a three-step test to determine whether a contribution is acceptable: It must be made with the child's money, the parent cannot reimburse the child for making the donation and the contribution has to be knowing and voluntary.

That last part of the test is the one that would seem to rule out a 2-year-old, said Michael E. Toner, a former FEC chairman who helped draft the rules. "If they are 16 or 17, they're clearly old enough to know what they're doing, as compared to someone who is, say, 10 years old. . . . I don't know any 2-year-old who is capable of making that kind of decision."

Well, certainly babies are not going to be toting up the maximum contribution for their presidential election prospects!

But the bigger picture here is that limitations on personal campaign contributions are too restrictive, and they infringe on the right to freedom of expression under the First Amendment. Families would not be making contributions in their children's names if they weren't limited in how much they could contribute to their favored candidates.

This point should be a boon for those thinking about new legal challenges to the financing regime. It's clear that there's a desire to provide greater financial support to the candidates among partisans on both sides of the political spectrum. Fred Wertheimer 's case for restricting campaign giving is looking weaker all the time.

See also my argument in defense of big money bundling, which cites the recent Wall Street Journal story on current trends in campaign financing.