Correction. I got a crucial detail wrong in this post. Donors do not file information. The donor info is gleaned from candidate filings. Misspellings and carelessness with donor names and addresses is their fault, not the donors’. The broader point remains, that the blizzard of typos makes it extremely difficult to track donor activity, but that’s not the result of their malfeasance, deliberate or otherwise. Also, my apologies for the delay in correcting; I’ve still got Covid and have precious little energy at all.

In what’s generally been an underwhelming primary season to date, one of the biggest developments has been the outpouring of support going from a bunch of Burlington-area business leaders to a relative handful of candidates. Look at the donor lists of the top earners and you see a bunch of the same guys (well, almost entirely guys) giving four-figure checks to the same people: Stewart Ledbetter, Scott Beck, Elizabeth Brown, John Rodgers, Pat Brennan, etc.

It would be highly instructive to track how much each of these minor tycoons is investing in political centrism and where they’re putting down their markers. And it’s almost impossible to do so, thanks to how the Secretary of State’s campaign finance portal processes donor reports and how the donors seem to be taking full advantage of a loophole on offer.

What’s happening is that donors submit reports with slightly different iterations of their names and addresses. When you search for donors, each report shows up as if it’s a separate person. For instance, if you search for “Lisman, B,” you get not one, but 30 separate matches. If you search for “Broughton, L,” you get 40.

Forty.

And most of them have few if any donations listed. If you want to find out how much Lenore Broughton has given to whom, you’ll have to open each and every one of those 40 in turn. It’s maddening.

There’s not much the Secretary can do about this. It would take hours of staff time to review all the donor reports and decide which ones came from the same person, and the campaign finance reporting system is designed to function fairly automatically without a lot of human input. A new system is in the works, likely to debut in 2025 (you don’t want to test it in the height of campaign season). Will it be better then? Maybe, maybe not. I won’t be expecting any silver bullets.

It may be unfair to assume this is the result of deliberate actions by publicity-shy donors, but it’s hard to conclude otherwise. These are successful, careful people who know their way around paperwork. Are we to simply believe they get fumblefingered when it comes to basic campaign finance reports — and specifically when it comes to personal identifying information? These glitches and typos don’t show up anywhere else on their reports.

Let’s take a look at how this plays out on the virtual page. The 30 matches for “Lisman, B” include some of the following iterations of his name:

• Lisman, Bruce
• Lisman, Bruce M
• Lisman, Bruce M.
• LISMAN, BRUCE
• LISMAN, BRUCE M.

The real fuckery comes with Lisman’s address, which is rendered in a stunning variety of ways:

• P.O. Box 1269, Shelburne, VT 05482
• P.O. BOX 1269, Shelburne, VT 05482
• P O BOX 1269, Shelburne, VT 05482
• POB 1269, Shelburne, VT 05482
• 1219 Quakersmith Point Road, Shelburne, VT 05482
• 1219 Quakersmith PT RD, Shelburne, VT 04382
• 1219 Quakersmith Pt Rd 05482, SHELBURNE, VT 05482
• 1219 Quaker Smith Point Road, Shelburne, VT 05482
• ?, Shelburn, VT 05482
• 1219 Quaker Smith Point Road, Burlington, VT 05482
• 1219 Quakersmith Point, Shelburne, VT 05482
• 1219 Quakers Smith Point Rd, Shelburne, VT 05482

You’d think the guy would know his own address, right? But you mix and match those names and addresses and you wind up with 30 separate donor files that take a whole lot of time and trouble to sort through.

Broughton is the past master (mistress?) of this practice. Her 40 reports include three different zip codes as well as the following renderings of her very simple address:

• 52 Henry St.
• 52 Henry Street
• Henry St.
• 52 Henery St.
• Henry St., Burlington vt, VT

But where she really goes wild is with her name:

• Broughton, Lenore
• Broughton, Lenore Follansbee
• Broughton, Lenore F.
• Follansbee Broghton, Lenore
• Broughton, Leonore
• broughton. lenore
• Lenore Broughton, Lenore Broughton
• Broughton, Lenora F.
• BROUGHTON, LENORE F
• BROUGHTON, LENORE F.
• Lenore Broughton, Lenore

Hey presto, a little creative typecraft, and the scope of your political generosity is cleverly concealed behind thick undergrowths of individual reports.

This is nothing new, but it has taken on a new level of annoyance in this season of business giving that’s either closely coordinated or one hell of a big coincidence. I’d dearly love to look up the likes of Lisman and Broughton and the Pizzagallis and Pomerleaus and all the rest without tediously opening up dozens of files, but I can’t. Transparency suffers as a result.