The Politician Accountability and Transparency in Campaign Holdings Act

Athletes are required to wear their sponsors. We accept this without thinking twice.

We don't extend the same expectation to the people who write our laws.

Campaign finance disclosure requirements exist. The filings are technically public. They're also buried in databases that require expertise to navigate, filed on timelines that lag months behind the money, and denominated in figures that mean nothing without context most people don't have. The transparency exists on paper. It doesn't exist in any room where it could actually matter.

This is not a campaign finance reform proposal. It does not propose restricting donations or challenging existing law. Contributions can continue at current levels. The First Amendment protects political spending. This proposal touches neither.

It proposes a dress code.

A NASCAR driver competes in a suit covered in sponsor logos. No one argues this compromises the race. A senator delivers a floor speech on drug pricing legislation after receiving $2.3 million from pharmaceutical industry donors. A county sheriff awards a contract after taking campaign contributions from the winning bidder. A state legislator votes on utility regulation funded by the utility. There is no visible indication of any of these relationships in the chamber, the courthouse, or the council room. The money is disclosed eventually - in filings most Americans will never read, on a timeline that trails the vote by months.

The PATCH Act does not ask whether the funding is appropriate. It asks that the funding be visible. Voters can decide what it means.

If the funding is legitimate, the display should be too.

Any Covered Official who has received one or more Qualifying Contributions must display a Donor Identification Patch for each qualifying donor on their Outer Garment during all Qualifying Appearances. The following specifications apply:

The display requirement applies to all public appearances made by a Covered Official in their official or quasi-official capacity. Qualifying Appearances include but are not limited to:

The following are not Qualifying Appearances: purely private social engagements with no media presence and no official business conducted; medical appointments; family events with no official function.

The determination of whether an appearance is a Qualifying Appearance rests with the OCC in the case of dispute.

The display requirement is triggered by any of the following contribution types. The thresholds and structures below are designed to close the routing mechanisms that allow significant financial relationships to avoid existing disclosure requirements.

The threshold for individual private contributions is $1,000 per Election Cycle. All other categories have no minimum - a $1 corporate contribution qualifies. The purpose of the asymmetry is to maintain individual participation while capturing the institutional relationships that most directly affect legislative behavior.

Enforcement is citizen-powered by design. Elected officials at every level — federal, state, and local: have continuously demonstrated an inability to regulate themselves. This proposal does not depend on the good faith of its subjects.

Any registered voter may file a formal complaint against a Covered Official for a Display Violation. Filing is free. Complaints are submitted via the citizen enforcement portal at PatchAct.com. The portal requires:

Upon submission, the complaint is delivered simultaneously and automatically to:

The simultaneous routing is structural, not optional. A complaint that reaches only the OCC can be slow-walked. A complaint that reaches the FEC, local press, and six activist organizations in the official's home district at the same moment cannot. The routing is the enforcement.

The OCC must acknowledge receipt within 5 business days and render a determination within 60 days. Failure to render a determination within 60 days results in automatic escalation to Tier 2 penalties.

Penalties are tiered by severity and recurrence. The structure is designed so that concealment costs more than compliance at every tier. An official who chooses not to display would face escalating financial and professional consequences that eventually exceed any benefit gained from concealment.

The PATCH Certified seal is awarded to corporate entities that have made zero qualifying political contributions during the certification period. It is the reverse of the politician's display requirement - where officials must show who funds them, certified companies can show who doesn't.

The program exists because “we don't do this” is a defensible competitive position. Companies that opt out of political spending face donor pressure and coordination costs without the ability to publicly distinguish themselves from companies that don't. The certification provides that distinction.

Certification requires a Tranche-powered investigation of the applicant's entity structure. Investigation fees are priced on complexity, not on company size or headcount. A small company with a tangled subsidiary and holding structure will pay more than a large company with a clean, simple structure.

Each applicant receives a Complexity Score of 1-10, published publicly alongside their certification. The score reflects the depth of investigation required: number of subsidiaries, holding company layers, trade association memberships, foreign ownership stakes, and related-party structures that required examination. The score is not a judgment on the company - it is a measure of how hard it was to verify the claim.

Pricing is quote-based on the complexity score. No fixed tiers by revenue, headcount, or industry.

Any credible complaint against a PATCH Certified company triggers immediate badge suspension - the seal goes visually red on patchact.com and in any licensed display - pending resolution. Resolution must occur within 30 days. If the complaint is substantiated, revocation is permanent and public. Revoked companies appear on the Wall of Revocations indefinitely, alongside the nature of the finding.

Re-application after revocation is not permitted for one full Election Cycle, and requires independent third-party verification at re-application.

Companies that begin the certification process and withdraw after receiving the investigation scope - before any finding has been made - are listed on the Wall of Applications Withdrawn. No accusation is attached. No finding is stated. The listing notes only that an application was opened and closed before completion.

The wall does not accuse. It observes. Readers may draw their own conclusions.

The complaint routing system (Section V) delivers citizen complaints to activist organizations operating in the Covered Official's home district or state. Those organizations are the enforcement multiplier. Their job is to amplify, investigate further, and apply constituent pressure through their existing channels.

The network is deliberately non-ideological in its composition and deliberately ideological in its effect. Left-aligned organizations and right-aligned organizations receive the same alerts about the same officials. Neither knows the other does. The result is that any Covered Official who violates the display requirement faces constituent pressure from their own base as well as from the opposition - simultaneously.

Partner registration is free. The only cost is acting on the information. Partners that demonstrate a pattern of receiving alerts and taking no action may be removed from the network at the discretion of the administration board.

When a corporation or PAC applies for partnership - and some will - the denial is its own press release.

The PATCH Act is administered by an independent board with no affiliation to any political party, corporation, PAC, or government agency. Board composition and operational structure scale with demonstrated traction - the institution grows as petition signatures generate media coverage, media coverage generates foundation interest, and foundation interest generates operating capital.

The administration board is responsible for:

The board operates on a no-party, no-PAC, no-corporate-funding principle. The same funding restrictions that disqualify activist partners apply to the administration board itself. The institution cannot accept the kind of funding that would give any single donor structural influence over its decisions.

Estimated annual operating cost at full institutional maturity: $1,000,000 to $1,600,000, covering board retainers, legal counsel, investigative staff, technology operations, and administration. The PATCH Certified program is designed to become self-funding through investigation fees before the institution reaches that cost level.