Democrats and their progressive allies are vastly expanding their unprecedented efforts, begun in 2020, to use private money to influence and run public elections.
Supported by groups with more than $1 billion at their disposal, according to public records, these partisan groups are working with state and local boards to influence functions that have long been the domain of government or political parties.
Registering and turning out voters—once handled primarily by political parties—and design of election office websites and mail-in ballots are being handed over to those same nonprofits, which are staffed by progressive activists that include former Democratic Party advocates, organized labor adherents, and community organizers.
Republicans have opposed such efforts, passing legislation in 24 states since 2020 curbing the private financing of elections. But the GOP does not have a comparable, boots-on-the-ground effort to influence election boards and workers, and the private-funding bans haven’t proved absolute in some states.
“There is a cottage industry of 501c3s in public policy and in the political arena, trying to shape the future of immigration or education or any other topic,” said Kimberly Fiorello, a former Republican state representative in Connecticut. “Increasingly they are about elections, election administration, election technology, ballot design, and all with big funding. These groups seem innocuous, but they aren’t innocuous because they are funded by one political side.”
Apart from legislative curbs on private financing of elections, Republicans so far have not shown any interest in countering their opponents’ strategies. Scott Walter, president of the conservative Capital Research Center, told a Zoom audience of Greenwich, Conn., residents this month that 2020 was an outlier in the way voting was shaped by outside influences.
“It was only in 2020 with the so-called ZuckBucks, and it wasn’t illegal because no one ever dreamt of having something like this,” Walter said. “There haven’t been any efforts by Republicans that we’re aware of to do anything like this anywhere.”
In the past two years, Democratic interests have worked from several angles, pushing back against voter ID, and seeking same-day voter registration, prolonged early voting, and a wide expansion of mail-in voting.
- The training of election officials by CTCL and like-minded organizations promising “nonpartisan” learning opportunities. Such training used to be the primary domain of the Election Center, a 1,500-member trade group that includes election officials and administrators.
- CTCL efforts to generate favorable media coverage: setting up interviews between elections offices and media outlets, and placing op-eds in local newspapers, under the bylines of election officials, using a prewritten template lamenting the lack of public funding for elections. (Stuart Baum, a CTCL staffer, wrote to Greenwich voting registrars in October: “A reporter from the Washington Post is interested in learning more about your experiences with your aging voting machines … specifically the unfortunate meltdowns that you’ve experienced with them.”)
- Sympathetic local officials alerting CTCL to public records requests for information regarding its work. A December information request from an attorney at the conservative Americans for Public Trust was sent to CTCL by Macoupin (Illinois) County Clerk Pete Duncan, noting “attached is a FOIA you may already be aware of, but I figured I would pass it along to you.”
- Lobbying at the state and federal level. New Venture, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, and the Hopewell Fund spent a combined $6.8 million on lobbying Congress last year, according to Open Secrets. State lobbying records show New Venture, Hopewell, and Secure Democracy have lobbied in at least 41 states over the past five years, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on issues including election reform.
In Georgia, the Hopewell Fund and Secure Democracy USA dispatched lobbyists to the Atlanta capitol building to water down a bill banning private funding of elections two weeks before its passage in March 2021. They won a loophole that allowed DeKalb County in February to accept a $2 million grant from CTCL—this despite the law’s being drafted in part by Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
In Utah, county clerks in Cache and Weber counties, while so far adhering to the state’s legislative ban on taking grants from outside private groups, have each paid $1,600 to be part of CTCL’s so-called voter integrity plan.
Hatch did not respond to an interview request.
Patrick requested but did not respond to emailed questions.
“This was not illegal,” said Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Texas Secretary of State’s office.
But the finding would normally lead to a further look into the accuracy of the applications and verification through calling the voters.
“There is DOJ guidance that says that talking to voters about things like this [how they applied to vote by mail] is potentially considered voter harassment or voter intimidation,” said Jacqueline Hagan Doyer, legal director of the Forensic Audit Division at the Texas Secretary of State’s office.
Hodge, who also served on the elections committee as a state representative, could not be reached for comment.
“Since 2018, we’ve seen Democrats catch up with the Republican strategy of getting voters to vote,” said Paul Bentz, a political consultant in Arizona. Voter registration, early voting, and mail-in ballots are cornerstones of the strategy, he said.
Committee Chairman Joe Gruters did not respond to an interview request.
Mac Warner, West Virginia’s Republican Secretary of State, told RCI that his party needs to become more aggressive in elections, using some of the same tactics as their opponents.
“When you’ve lost so many elections, you finally have to decide to fight fire with fire,” said Warner, who is a gubernatorial candidate for 2024. “You don’t win elections by not getting ballots out there. You can start playing by their rules and win an election. It’s time to go in another direction.”