Group starts first ‘twitter lobby’ of senators

The short bursts coming from Twitter Wednesday included a new call for transparency in the Senate from the Sunlight Foundation.

The foundation is pushing for passage of the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, which would require senators to file their quarterly campaign finance reports electronically. House campaigns, as well as presidential candidates, already file their campaign finance reports electronically, and have done so since 2001.

Though only 17 senators currently have accounts on the Twitter network, Gabriela Schneider, Sunlight’s spokeswoman, believed tweeting senators would help ensure its passage.

“It’s in addition to a regular lobbying campaign,” she said. “It gets people’s attention.”

The “tweet lobby,” which Sunlight says is the first of its kind, calls for constituents to send their senators a tweet reply by addressing them with an “@” sign at the top of the message.

The bill was first introduced in 2003 by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), but in each Congress since then, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) would issue holds to introduce an amendment requiring any organization filing an ethics complaint to reveal its donors, effectively killing the bill. Schneider said her organization believes Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kans.) is poised to introduce the same “poison pill” amendment in this congress.

–Samuel Rubenfeld