End the Fundraising Circus: Return Campaigns to the People

Modern campaign finance is a circus.

The average Congressman spends 20 to 30 hours a week—not reading legislation, not solving problems, not meeting with constituents—but dialing for dollars. That’s not leadership. That’s hostage-taking by the political fundraising industrial complex.

And the worst part? The system is rigged to keep it that way. Big tech, big finance, and partisan megadonor networks like ActBlue have turned elections into auctions, and the people always lose the bid.

ActBlue pretends to be a grassroots platform for small-dollar donors. But what they don’t tell you is this:

• It’s been used as a dark money funnel—where fake names and repeated donations from the same accounts have gone unchecked for years.

  
  

• They’ve refused meaningful audits, while flooding progressive candidates with untraceable, often international money.

  
  

• Their donation system has no real-time identity verification, allowing potential fraud that skews both elections and perception.

Meanwhile, conservatives and independents trying to run lean campaigns based on merit—not manipulation—get buried under the weight of that machine.

This isn’t sour grapes. This is a broken system.

As your Congressman, I will fight to:

• Ban political donation platforms from operating without certified, real-time ID verification for donors.

  
  

• Cap total contributions from any single donor platform to a candidate per quarter to prevent automated donor flooding.

  
  

• Introduce the Honest Elections Technology Act, requiring full financial transparency from digital donation processors and automatic audits for any platform processing over $100 million annually.

  
  

• Establish a Federal Office of Campaign Finance Simplification, to provide no-cost, secure donation services to small campaigns that opt out of the PAC and bundler game.

We can’t just keep criticizing corruption—we need to dismantle the pipes that feed it.

Elections should be about who best understands the needs of their district, not who can afford the most mailers or TV spots. And elected officials should be spending their time reading bills, writing laws, and serving people—not begging billionaires for another check.

The future of democracy isn’t in the hands of the donor class. It’s in yours.

Join our campaign to put people—not platforms—first. Follow @SholdonDaniels on X and help us break the cycle of corruption.