More importantly with respect to "show us the money" is, give us the details of the tens of millions of dollars from "unitemized" individuals that some candidates have. A black hole of many millions of dollars.

QUESTION: Hi, I was visiting your site, and saw a breakdown of “Small Individual Contributions.” I could not find where “small” was defined. Is it less than $500? –Bill Hensley


ANSWER: Great question, Bill. When we refer to “small” donations — or “unitemized” ones, in campaign finance parlance — we are referring to contributions of $200 or less to federal candidates, PACs or party committees.

But don’t think you can make lots of contributions of $200 or less without disclosure. Multiple donations that total more than $200 from a single person must be reported, just as large contributions are. A person could write five $100 checks to a campaign, with each one of those contributions technically considered as small. However, that person has given $500 to the campaign, and the FEC requires the campaign to disclose the donor’s information.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/05/opensecrets-mailbag-small-vs-large/

Soooo... I expect that the candidates will of course give all required information to the Federal Election Commission, as they all have been. Any mistakes get fined just as in previous elections.

It's all above board.

I realize you know all this, but I provided this information for readers that might not know what "unitemized" donors are and what the reporting requirements actually are.

I know it's legal, but also there are a lot of details that campaigns can disclose if they want, or details that they can embellish upon. We have one candidate who claims lots of donors, but how do we know for sure? Those individuals aren't reported to the FEC.

And, of course, you know that.

The only body of consequence that DOES care about the number of donors is the DNC, because they set number of donors to qualify for the debates.

Sooooo... obviously the candidates ARE reporting their number of donors to the DNC and the DNC seems satisfied with how that is done.

Otherwise, number of donors is just a bragging rights sort of thing.

Perhaps even that is meaning less now since candidates are using their quarterly fundraising dollar amounts for bragging rights.

Like saying "Biden fundraised ~$15 million,the fourth best total, for the third quarter." or "Warren raised ~$24.6 million, the second best total, for the third quarter."