Websites and Donation Pages

The website is the address on every sign, mailer, post and business card. It does not need to be big. It needs to load fast on a phone, say plainly who is behind it, take money correctly, and capture the names of people who want to help. The general rules for "paid for by" lines across all media are in course 46's Literature, Signs and Ads, and the contribution limits are in Who Can Give, and How Much. This lesson applies both to the website and the donation form.

A one-page site that does the job

A voter who scans a yard sign's address is standing on a sidewalk with a phone. Give that person the answer in one screen and one scroll.

Put on the page	Why	Skip or add later
Name, office, district and election date	People need to know whether they can vote for you	A long biography
A photo and three short reasons you are running	The first thing most visitors read	Twelve policy pages
One primary button (donate, volunteer or sign)	A page with five equal buttons gets fewer clicks on each	Merchandise store
Email sign-up with consent wording (lesson 02)	The list is the campaign's owned audience	Pop-ups that block the page on phones
How to vote: registration, absentee and election-day dates	Turns interest into a ballot (dates in lesson 01)	Copying rules you have not checked with the clerk
Contact email and mailing address	Reporters, voters and the elections office need a way to reach you	A personal cell number
"Paid for by" line and a short privacy note	Idaho and federal disclaimer rules; donor trust	Legalese

Cheap builders work. Carrd's Pro Standard plan, as of October 2026, is $19 a year for up to 10 sites and includes custom domains and forms; its cheaper Pro Lite plans do not include custom domains (Carrd). Site builders bundled with donation platforms exist too. Whatever you pick, check before you build that the site works on a phone, you can connect your own domain, and you can export your form submissions.

Domain and hosting

The domain is the most important thing you will buy, and the cheapest. Registries set the wholesale price; some registrars, such as Cloudflare, say they charge only the registry and ICANN fees with no markup (Cloudflare Registrar). Others add a markup or bundle in extras. The price difference is a few dollars. The control difference is everything.

What the disclaimer rules say about websites

Idaho Code 67-6614A applies whenever a person spends money to finance communications expressly advocating the election, approval or defeat of a candidate, a measure or a precinct committeeman candidate "through any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine, outdoor advertising facility, direct mailing or any other type of general public political advertising." The person responsible must be "clearly indicated." Websites are not named. A campaign site paid for with campaign money, open to the public and urging a vote, fits the plain meaning of "general public political advertising," and the Secretary of State's Disclosure Manual tells treasurers to "clearly indicate on all public political advertising the person responsible," with the example "Paid for by Candidate X for Senate." The statute was last amended in 2016. Put the line in the site footer on every page.

For federal candidates and committees, there is no question. 11 CFR 110.11(a)(1) requires disclaimers on "all websites and internet applications of political committees available to the general public." The FEC's wording and format rules, and what changed for internet ads in its 2022 rule, are in lesson 06.

Penalties are modest but real. A violation of 67-6614A carries a civil fine of up to $250 for an individual and $2,500 for anyone else, and a knowing and willful violation is a misdemeanor (67-6625). The cost of compliance is one line of text.

Donation pages

The table describes the main donation tools from their own pages as of October 2026, with no endorsement.

Platform (as of October 2026)	Card fee stated	Other costs stated	Who it says it serves
ActBlue	"3.7% + $0.23," all processor and ActBlue fees included (help center)	No signup, payout or maintenance fees; $7 dispute fee	"Eligible federal candidates, political committees, and nonprofit organizations," and candidates in every state except Connecticut plus some local candidates, with access at its discretion (Can I use ActBlue?)
WinRed	3.94 percent on most donations, 3.2 percent on high-dollar gifts; ACH 0.8 percent capped at $5 (pricing, dated October 22, 2024)	No monthly platform fee; $99 a month for super PACs; $15 dispute fee	The pricing page refers to candidates, organizations and committees and does not set out eligibility
Anedot	4.0 percent plus $0.30 for political campaigns; 3.3 percent plus $0.30 for 501(c)(3) nonprofits (pricing)	No monthly fee	Churches, campaigns, schools and other nonprofits
General processor (Stripe as an example)	2.9 percent plus 30 cents for domestic cards; 1.5 percent more for international cards and 0.5 percent more for manually entered ones (pricing)	ACH 0.8 percent capped at $5	Says it does not restrict access by political viewpoint, but fundraising by political organizations needs extra due diligence and Stripe "might not be able to grant approval" (restricted businesses)

The political platforms do compliance chores a general processor does not: they ask for the employer and occupation fields federal races need, attach the right designation, export in formats treasurers use, and handle the donor-paid fee option. A general processor is cheaper per gift and leaves all of that to you. For a city race with forty donors, either works. For a legislative race with hundreds of small gifts, the export alone is worth the difference.

What you must collect from donors

Idaho's rule is short. Under Idaho Code 67-6610, anyone who gives more than $50 to a candidate or political committee in a calendar year, counting smaller gifts together, must give a statement of full name and complete address. If a gift over that amount arrives without them, the treasurer returns it if the donor can be identified and otherwise sends it to the State Controller for the public school fund. 67-6607(1)(a) then requires reports to list the full name and complete address of each donor over $50 and allows smaller gifts as one total. The Disclosure Manual goes further for record-keeping: obtain the full name and complete address of anyone who gives "a contribution of any amount."

Idaho does not ask for occupation or employer. Federal law does. The FEC's recording receipts page says campaigns record name and mailing address for gifts over $50 and add occupation and employer once a donor's gifts exceed $200. Under the best efforts rule, 11 CFR 104.7(b), every written federal solicitation must clearly ask for those four items with an accurate statement of federal law, and a missing item on a gift over $200 calls for one follow-up request within 30 days that carries no new solicitation.

Field	Idaho state or local race	Federal race
Full name	Required; manual says for any amount; itemized over $50	Recorded over $50; reported over $200
Complete address	Required; itemized over $50	Recorded over $50; reported over $200
Occupation and employer	Not required	Required over $200, with best efforts language
Election designation (primary or general)	Required by the manual for candidates	Required
Citizenship or green card attestation	Wise; foreign nationals barred (course 46 lesson 02)	Standard on federal platforms

Keeping online gifts inside the limits

Forms check one gift at a time. Limits apply to everything a donor gives for an election, across every form, check and in-kind gift. Idaho's per-election limits are in Who Can Give, and How Much: $1,000 for the primary and $1,000 for the general for legislative, judicial and local candidates; $5,000 and $5,000 statewide.

The fee rule is new. The Secretary of State's April 1, 2026 letter, which names Anedot, ActBlue and WinRed, says that following the FEC's reporting guidelines the office "considers the payment of transaction fees part of a contribution." Treasurers report the full amount the donor paid, fee included, as the contribution, and report the fee as an expenditure to the platform. A $1,000 gift plus a fee to a legislative, county or local candidate "is not permitted." Because it was a policy clarification, earlier reports need not be amended. The office recommends disabling the fee option for gifts at or near the limit.

Recurring gifts are the other trap. Each charge is a contribution on the date it is made, designated to the election it falls before. A monthly gift that looks small adds up across five months before a May primary.

Refunds and disputes

Refund an over-limit amount or a prohibited gift as soon as you find it; Idaho's statute sets no refund deadline. If the gift was on a report already filed, the Disclosure Manual says to report a "returned" contribution on the current report, recorded within the original transaction in the Sunshine portal. Refunding through the platform is cleanest, but processors may keep their part of the fee: ActBlue's fee page says it credits back its own share of the fee on a refund while its processor's transaction fees are not refundable. A chargeback is a refund the donor forced; record it the same way and keep the platform's dispute notice.

A privacy note donors will read

A privacy note is a promise, and your sign-up and donation forms depend on it. Keep it under 200 words: what you collect (name, address, email, phone, gift history), why (to report as Idaho or federal law requires, and to keep in touch if they agree), that donor names and addresses over the reporting threshold become public on Sunshine or FEC reports, that you do not sell the information, who processes payments, and how to unsubscribe or ask for a correction. Telling donors that their name and address will be public is the single most useful line; many first-time donors do not know.

Accessibility basics

Some voters use screen readers, captions, the keyboard instead of a mouse, or larger text. A site that works for them works better for everyone on a small phone in bright sun. The standard is the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2, first published as a Recommendation on October 5, 2023, with the current version dated December 12, 2024.

WCAG 2.2 criterion	What it asks	Campaign site fix
1.1.1 Non-text Content (A)	Text alternatives for images	Alt text on every photo and graphic; describe text in images
1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded) (A)	Captions for recorded video with audio	Caption every video (lesson 08)
1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) (AA)	At least 4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text	Dark text on light backgrounds; no gray on gray
2.1.1 Keyboard (A)	Everything works from a keyboard	Tab through your donate form before launch
2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum) (AA)	Tap targets at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or spaced apart	Big buttons, no tiny links crowded together
3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum) (AA)	No memory or puzzle tests to log in, with exceptions	Matters mainly for donor accounts; let platforms handle it

Legal duties differ for campaigns and governments. The Justice Department's ADA Title II rule, published April 24, 2024, requires state and local governments' web content and mobile apps to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. An interim final rule published April 20, 2026 moved the compliance dates to April 26, 2027 for public entities of 50,000 or more people and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones and special district governments, according to ADA.gov as of October 2026. That rule covers a city's or county's official site and an officeholder's official pages, not a candidate's campaign site. This lesson does not cover private ADA lawsuits over campaign websites; it found no Idaho example to report.