Federal records reviewed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff have attributed nearly $4,500 in new ActBlue donations to an 88-year-old retiree in Milan, Michigan, over a recent six-week span — including four transactions totaling $22 that posted on a day she had no internet access at all.
LeDuff reported 562 transactions tied to the woman, Elizabeth Waffle, during that period. She lives in a rural trailer without power, water, or internet service, having lost her house to a fire two years ago. On his first visit to her home, LeDuff and Waffle tried together to make a donation online and could not get a connection.
“Last time we were here, remember, we tried to make a donation,” LeDuff said, recounting the exchange in a follow-up interview.
Among the newly logged transactions was a $51 donation to Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan whom LeDuff described as “the king of the Michigan micro-donors.” El-Sayed won the Democrat primary in August by under a percentage point and now faces Republican Mike Rogers in a race analysts consider pivotal to control of the Senate.
The numbers are not new to Waffle. Federal filings reviewed in July had already attributed 14,696 donations to her over five years — an average of roughly eight a day — which LeDuff calculated at more than $130,000.
When LeDuff returned last week with printouts of the records, Waffle pushed back, asking whether he was trying to write a hit piece on the fundraising platform.
“I think it’s a bunch of hogwash,” Waffle said.
She suggested Republicans engage in similar practices and agreed when LeDuff asked if her attitude was to “fight fire with fire.” But she then struck a different note.
“I believe in honesty,” she said. “I do care if somebody is fudging and putting stuff in.”
Asked if she wanted LeDuff to keep digging, she said yes. “Yeah, if they are,” she said.
Conflicting Figures
Not every outside review lines up with LeDuff’s numbers. The Center Square reported that FEC records show $100,295 in contributions tied to Waffle’s name across three election cycles — a different total than the one cited in LeDuff’s reporting. The Center Square also noted that ActBlue’s Tandem Fundraising tool allows a single donation form to be split across multiple campaigns, which can generate several logged transactions from one actual gift, potentially inflating transaction counts without reflecting separate decisions by the donor.
The scrutiny of Waffle’s case comes amid broader federal attention to ActBlue. ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones has repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment rights before the House Administration Committee this year, and President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department in April 2025 to investigate whether online fundraising platforms had processed illegal contributions.
