"Such activity would have been unremarkable had Joan Holmes not died of cancer on Feb. 1, 2007.
Joan Holmes is the late wife of media entrepreneur Lee Holmes, who himself has in recent years ranked among the most prolific political donors in Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean. And Lee Holmes was one of the first donors to the upstart Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which played a prominent role in electing conservative Republicans during the 2010 election cycle.
How exactly Joan Holmes made the donations from beyond the grave is shrouded in mystery: Both Lee Holmes and a Tea Party Express official deny they're responsible.
Lee Holmes, for his part, told OpenSecrets Blog that he did not make the contributions in his wife's name, and he contended it was 'wrong' for her name to appear in any group's campaign finance reports at all."
It is probably much easier for a dead person to make a contribution than to vote (not that I would recommend either). I am actually surprised this got caught at all. There are no routine scrubs that I'm aware of by the FEC for contributions by dead people; it sounds like it just caught the eye of someone at the Center for Responsive Politics. The penalties for making a contribution in the name of another are pretty severe and include prison time -- my guess is this was inadvertent and will be quickly remedied by the PAC.
