West Virginia lawmakers have approved a campaign finance package that will change what voters can see in state contribution reports, starting next year. Under the new law, donors’ employer information will be removed from the public disclosures, and their residential street addresses will be redacted as well, according to the Associated Press description of the bill’s provisions.
The measure was intended to limit the personal details that appear on public campaign finance filings. The Secretary of State’s Office will still collect a donor’s street number and street address and will still have access to an identified employer, but the information will be withheld from the campaign finance statements released to the public.
Supporters of the legislation said online exposure can lead to harassment or doxxing. During debate, Sen. Mike Azinger, a Republican from Wood County and the bill’s lead sponsor, argued that the internet makes it easier for people to find and misuse personal information, and said the goal was to protect employers from harassment that can occur in “horrible ways.”
Democrats argued that the redactions will reduce transparency for voters trying to understand who is backing candidates and whether donors may have a financial relationship with government decisions. Sen. Joey Garcia, a Democrat from Marion, said on the Senate committee record last month that “Less information is not better,” and he criticized the removal of employer information as going too far, even while agreeing to address doxxing risk through address redaction.
Garcia said the employer redaction can obscure political support that is tied to specific workplaces. He described a scenario in which multiple employees of the same company donate to politicians, and those politicians later award contracts to that business; in that example, the public would no longer see which employer the donors worked for once employer names are redacted, and instead would only know the donations came from people described in a more general way.
Azinger and other Republicans countered that the bill’s changes are aimed at safety and that public disclosures should be limited when personal information is being misused. The bill’s backers also argued that if the state lists only donor occupation rather than employer, the public will still see who is funding campaigns at a broad level, without displaying which specific employer each donor works for.
Del. Mike Hornby, a Republican from Berkeley, said during committee debate that he did not think it was necessary for donors’ workplace details to be included in public filings. He also described how reducing workplace specificity would still allow the public to identify that “consultants are funding a particular politician,” even if it would not show whether those consultants worked for pharmaceutical or power companies.
Del. Sean Hornbuckle, a Democrat from Cabell, argued that the changes would make it harder to trace money in politics. He said on the record that the law would allow “yet more money to be put into politics and make it harder for it to be traced.”
The legislation passed both chambers by wide margins and was signed by the governor, with the changes scheduled to take effect after the state’s general election later this year.