Senate Democrats introduced legislation Monday to ban political campaigns from prechecking recurring political donation boxes after a number of former President Donald Trump’s supporters complained that they’d been duped into contributing more than they’d intended to.
Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., introduced the measure after the bipartisan Federal Election Commission unanimously recommended this month that campaigns be barred from automatically opting donors into recurring contributions through prechecked boxes in solicitations.
The FEC voted 6-0 after The New York Times reported last month that the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee used the tactic to collect big bucks from small donors in the final months of the 2020 campaign, when numerous supporters who thought they’d made one-time donations were charged for several.
After thousands of people complained, the campaign and the RNC wound up issuing more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors in the final months of the year, the investigation found. In all, they refunded over $122 million, according to The Times.