Today’s Louisville Courier-Journal reports on an effort to correct the apparently serious problem of not having contribution disclosure reports available 57 days before the election. Instead, candidates for state legislature in Kentucky have to file their reports 30 days and 15 days before the election.
The problem is obvious for Kentucky voters. Without knowing who their neighbor has contributed to, or whether a person known to have a different perspective has donated to a particular candidate, how can voters be expected to decide who to vote for? Gosh, they might actually have to pay attention to what candidates are saying, and what their voting record has been! It’s so much easier to know that Candidate X is "getting money from Big Labor" or "accepted contributions from an executive at an oil company."
Although disclosure is almost universally accepted as a good thing, it’s difficult to see what benefit it provides other than to distract people from real issues. Maybe between now and the 30-day filing, the Courier-Journal could focus on what candidates are saying to voters?
