The Federal House Committee on Election Law Oversight passed several bills on Thursday to prevent illegal campaign donations and foreign interference in elections.

Three of the bills, led by Republicans, stemmed from a three-year investigation by Chairman Bryan Steil (R-WI) into the online fundraising platform ActBlue.

During Thursday's markup, Steil stated, "Current campaign finance laws were not written with the digital age in mind. Our investigation revealed that fraudsters and foreign nationals can exploit our current system to illegally donate to campaigns. This is an unacceptable vulnerability, and we have an opportunity to fix it."

Steil's three-year investigation into ActBlue not only exposed the platform's "inadequate" fraud prevention practices but, more importantly, revealed security loopholes in America's current campaign finance laws.

To block these potential instances of fraud, the Campaign Finance Transparency Act mandates that political donations made via credit or debit card must include the CVV/CVC number, billing zip code, and a name matching the donor's name.

The bill also prohibits political donations made through prepaid gift cards and requires platforms to report all political donations, not just those above a certain amount.

For donors without a U.S. mailing address, documentation verification will be required to prevent foreign entities from impersonating Americans to funnel money to specific political candidates.

The other two bills brought before the full House, the Preventing Foreign Interference in American Elections Act and the Stop Foreign Funds in Elections Act, aim to prevent foreign funding from influencing how American elections are conducted and what issues appear on the ballot.

Steil said, "We should not allow foreign actors to influence American elections. That's why I introduced the Preventing Foreign Interference in American Elections Act, which prohibits foreign nationals from contributing to campaign activities. This includes voter registration, get-out-the-vote efforts, and ballot collection activities."

In 2024, foreign billionaires have channeled funds through nonprofit "dark money" groups like the Sixteen Thirty Fund to support progressive ballot initiatives related to abortion access and automatic voter registration in several states, including Ohio, Arizona, and Nevada. These activities are currently legal at the federal level.

With midterm elections rapidly approaching, the Republican-controlled Congress is intensifying its efforts to amend or reshape election and voting laws, arguing that federal and state election regulations are inadequate to protect election security and prevent fraud.

The SAVE America Act, a bill that would strengthen voter identification requirements nationwide, passed the House but appears to be effectively dead in the Senate, facing filibuster challenges that it was clear all Democratic senators would oppose.

President Donald Trump urged the abolition of the filibuster and the passage of the SAVE America Act, but the filibuster abolition has failed due to a lack of Republican senators uniting, and efforts to bypass it through budget reconciliation have stalled due to a failure to secure 50 votes.

National NNP Representative Sung Ku Hong / Special Dispatch from this paper NNP info@newsandpost.com