Bringing the Senate into the 21st Century

Traditions can be a good thing, but some times they're just plain inane.

Take for example the U.S. Senate's insistence that campaign finance reports be filed the old-fashioned way: on paper.

Federal candidates for places like the House of Representatives and the White House exist in the 21st century, filing all of their campaign data with the Federal Election Commission electronically, making it easy for individual voters and watchdog groups to slice and dice the numbers and, as the saying goes, follow the money.

But the Senate stubbornly remains in the mid-1970s requiring that all campaign finance reports be submitted to the Secretary of the Senate. Those reports are then scanned, with the individual, page-by-page images posted on the FEC's website. The mind-numbing work of punching in the individual bits of data to make them electronic eventually occurs, but often not in time to be of use or interest to the public.

As the Washington Post's excellent Jeff Birnbaum reports today, there may be some progress developing in remedying this situation. Maybe.

The Senate's Committee on Rules and Administration is in charge of deciding what to do about the issue and, despite pleas from a bipartisan group of senators, has done nothing. I tried many times in the past two weeks to get the spokeswoman for the committee's chairman, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), to return my phone calls and to answer questions on the topic. But she did not respond.

In fact, it's hard to find anyone who will defend the current law. On the other hand, lots of folks have problems with the situation and are eager to say so, including the Federal Election Commission. The FEC has recommended that the Senate move to electronic filing on "multiple occasions," said Michael E. Toner, the FEC's chairman. "Senate campaigns are the only ones that don't file electronically," he said, "even though there's widespread agreement that electronic filing works well and allows data to be publicly available within hours of it being received."

Senators from both sides of the aisle agree. Eleven senators (seven Republicans and four Democrats) sent a letter to Lott in July urging him to approve legislation that would mandate electronic filing. "We believe there is consensus among our colleagues to move to electronic filing and online disclosure of campaign finance reports," said the letter, which was primarily authored by the political odd couple of Sens. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). "The next step in this process is Senate action."

Is anything likely to get done soon? No. But every little of pressure pulls the upper chamber a little further out of the past.