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Latest News From the Brennan Center

By Madeline Friedman – 03/20/12

All of these stories can be seen in full on the Brennan Center website. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And be sure to read and sign up for our new voting newsletter.

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New Voting Laws Have Significant 2012 Impact

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed a voter ID bill into law Wednesday, and a Virginia voter ID bill awaits the signature of Gov. Robert McDonnell, who has not taken a public position on the legislation. In an editorial, the Richmond Times-Dispatch noted, “What once was said about an album by ‘Spinal Tap’ may be said of the voter-ID measure: It fills a much-needed void.” If McDonnell signs the measure, 70 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the 2012 presidential election will come from states with new voting laws, according to a new Brennan Center analysis. “This wave of restrictive voting laws is inexcusable, and the numbers clearly show the impact it could have on this year’s elections,” said Democracy Program Director Wendy Weiser. Read our comprehensive study on restrictive voting laws.

To Protect or to Prosecute? National Security Whistleblowers

Join the Brennan Center’s Liza Goitein today, March 20, at 4:30pm, for a Brennan Center panel on the legal and ethical concerns confronting national security whistleblowers. Whistleblowers from the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies – CIA, FBI, NSA, and others – play a critical role in exposing government wrongdoing that might otherwise remain classified. However, a whistleblower’s revelations can leave them vulnerable to criminal prosecution for breaching secrecy laws. On hand will be Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency official who faced 35 years in prison for exposing wasteful and privacy-invading programs. (After intense criticism, the government dropped its case. Drake pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.)  Other panelists include former DOJ official Jesselyn Radack, a whistleblower herself and one of Drake’s lawyers, and Brennan Center Fellow and Pulitzer Prize-winner Barton Gellman. The event is part of the Government Accountability Project’s American Whistleblower Tour. For details on the event, click here.

Justice Department Official Discusses Voting

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez will make a presentation and discuss perhaps the most contentious issue he faces: voting rights. Under the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department has unique powers to oversee voting changes throughout the south. One of the panelists at the March 28 forum will be Wendy Weiser, Director of the Brennan Center Democracy Program and co-author of Voting Law Changes in 2012. This event is a rare opportunity to hear from the Justice Department’s highest-ranking official directly responsible for voting rights. To learn about the March 28^th event, click here.

Court Must Reject Texas Voter ID Law

The Brennan Center asked a federal district judge for permission to intervene in Texas’ effort for court approval of its new voter photo ID law. The Center objects because the law “could prevent hundreds of thousands eligible voters from casting a ballot, including a disproportionate number of minorities,” said Senior Counsel Myrna Pérez. Meanwhile, the Justice Department objected to the measure because of its discriminatory effect on minority voters. The Center represents the Texas NAACP and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus of the Texas House of Representatives.

Voters: Super PACs Should Be Illegal

A new poll shows nearly 70 percent of registered voters believe super PACs should be illegal, and more than half (52 percent), feel that way strongly. Almost 80 percent of political independents say super PACs should be banned, according to the Washington Post-ABC News survey. It is exceedingly rare to find such overwhelming agreement on any issue. “Big-spending super PACs have taken over our democracy in 2012,” said Brennan Center Counsel Mark Ladov. “This poll clearly shows the American people want it back.” Read about the growing legal backlash against the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which fueled the rise of super PACs. Read more about the Center’s work on super PACs here and here.

Protecting Fair Redistricting

The Brennan Center helped block an effort to overturn a provision of New York’s redistricting law. Two years ago the New York state legislature abolished the practice of counting prisoners as district residents. Not only does including prisoners as district residents give greater influence to districts with prisons, it dilutes the votes of those who live in districts without prisons. Several New York State Senators challenged the law, claiming it violated the New York Constitution. But the Brennan Center, as part of a coalition of civil rights organizations, successfully defended the measure in court. A Quinnipiac University poll showed that a majority of New Yorkers of all regions and party affiliations support the law.

Brennan Center Blog

Analyzing Minority Turnout After Voter ID – Keesha Gaskins 

• Turnout among Hispanic voters in Georgia did not increase after a restrictive no-photo, no-vote ID law went into effect, as some have claimed.

Court Rejects Voter Suppression Efforts – Nicolas Riley

• The Third Circuit upheld a consent decree prohibiting the RNC from practices aimed at depressing voter turnout.

‘Misunderestimating’ Campaign Finance Reform – Jonathan Backer 

• Lobbying reform and campaign finance reform — and public campaign financing in particular — have the ability to change the rules of the game in our democracy.

What We’re Reading

• See what the Brennan Center’s reading in this daily round-up of quick hits, clips, and opinion pieces touching on key issues of democracy, justice, liberty and national security. Includes stories on Florida’s restrictive voting law, NYPD surveillance, and the ongoing foreclosure crisis.

Read more blog posts here. To have the blog in your RSS feed, click here.

• March 20 – The Brennan Center and the Government Accountability Project present a discussion on national security whistleblowers at NYU School of Law today. Features former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barton Gellman.
• March 22 – Counsel Roopal Patel is a panelist at a Fordham Law School discussion on career options after law school.
• March 28 – Brennan Center Democracy Program Director Wendy Weiser participates in an NYU Law panel discussion on voting rights controversies. Other panelists include Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, and NYU Law professors Samuel Issacharoff and Richard Pildes.
• March 29 – The Brennan Center hosts a discussion on the benefits of public financing in New York State. Panelists include Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute and a professor of political science at SUNY Albany; Hazel Dukes, President of the NAACP New York State Conference; and Mike Petro, Vice President of the non-profit, non-partisan, business-led public policy organization, Committee for Economic Development.

To read more Brennan Center In The News, click here.

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Tags: Newsletter, Democracy, Justice, Liberty & National Security

Money and Politics: This Week in New York

By ReformNY – 03/16/12

Crossposted at ReformNY.

Every Friday, the Brennan Center will be compiling the latest news concerning the corrosive nature of money in New York State politics—and the ongoing need for public financing and robust campaign finance reform. We’ll also be linking to dispatches from around the country highlighting the national scope of this crisis. This week’s links were contributed by Matthew Ladd.

For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics and #fairelex.

New York Campaign Finance and Ethics News

1. Former State Congressman Mike Arcuri expressed his strong support this week for a state system of public campaign financing.  Arcuri, a member of the NY LEAD coalition, wrote that such a system would put regular voters back “in the driver’s seat.” Arcuri also decried Albany’s “culture of dependence on large campaign contributions,” describing it as a corrosive and expensive practice that reduces public faith in state government.

2. Opening arguments began this week in the federal corruption trial of Pedro Espada, Jr., and his son Pedro Gautier Espada, who are accused of using the Soundview Healthcare Network as “their own taxpayer-funded piggy bank” by funneling more than $500,000 from the organization and spending it on cars, spa treatments, and other personal luxuries. The former state Senate Majority Leader and his son are charged with theft, embezzlement, and misapplication of federal funds, as well as conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

3. Evidence introduced in the ongoing corruption and bribery trial of former Yonkers Councilwoman Sandy Annabi has cast the spotlight on another public official: state Senator Tom Libous, who, according to witness testimony, pushed a law firm to hire his son—and inflate his starting salary—in exchange for steering government business toward the firm’s practice.

National Campaign Finance News

1. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released this week shows that nearly 70% of Americans believe that super PACs should be illegal. The poll also found that broad bipartisan support for banning super PACs: the level of opposition to super PACs by Democrats (70%) and Tea Party supporters (69%) was nearly identical, and well over half of Republicans (55%) favored banning the groups as well. Additionally, of the 69% polled who believed that super PACs should be banned, over half felt “very strongly” about the issue—an indication that Citizens United is squarely at odds with public opinion on corporate campaign spending.

2. A nationwide coalition of campaign finance reform groups called this week for all presidential candidates, including President Obama and the four remaining Republican primary contenders, to reveal the names of their major “bundlers,” the fundraisers who steer millions of dollars to campaign war chests. Although federal law only requires presidential candidates to disclose the names of bundlers who are also registered lobbyists, major candidates in both parties disclosed other bundlers as well during the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections—a practice currently followed only by the President. The coalition letters to individual candidates are available here.

3. The AFL-CIO Executive Council released a statement on Wednesday that roundly condemned the flood of corporate spending unleashed by Citizens United, praised current efforts at campaign finance reform, and threw its support behind public campaign financing as an effective way to “enfranchise voters and ensure that wealth does not yield disproportionate influence.” The AFL-CIO also called for greater disclosure of corporate contributions and campaign expenditures, better contribution limits for wealthy individuals, and other reform efforts “to bring about greater fairness, openness and participation in elections.”

4. The Washington Post finds that candidate and campaign spending during the GOP primary has been cut in half since the last presidential primary, and that the influence of super PAC spending has been amplified by weak fundraising. According to David Donnelly of the Public Campaign Action Fund, traditional fundraising has been supplanted by “this new phenomenon of people writing huge checks in support of the candidates. You’re replacing excitement with those who have a huge amount of money.”

5. The downturn in GOP primary fundraising from small individual donors can also be attributed to sky-high contributions by corporations and wealthy backers, argues Nick Nyhart of Public Campaign, who finds that Republican super PACs, and billionaire backers such as Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess, may reduce contributions from ordinary citizens. “It sends a bad message to ordinary voters,” Nyhart said. “You begin to feel like politics is a playing field that only millionaires and billionaires are allowed on.”

Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Public Financing, NY Reform

Analyzing Minority Turnout After Voter ID

By Keesha Gaskins – 03/15/12

I had the pleasure of speaking with Kerry Miller of the Daily Circuit on Minnesota Public Radio on the subject of Voter ID laws. Minnesota currently has a proposed constitutional amendment moving through its legislature to impose strict photo ID restrictions on voters and possibly eliminate Election Day registration. I take great pride in the fact that my home state of Minnesota consistently has the highest turnout in the country, and I’m pained by this legislation that is sure to reduce opportunities for voter participation across the state.

I want to correct a common misperception that came up during show, suggesting that voter turnout among Hispanic voters in Georgia has increased since the passage of its restrictive no-photo, no-vote photo ID law. 

Motivation for voter turnout is notoriously difficult to measure. It’s a moving target, not lending itself easily to empirical methods of evaluation. But in this case, any assertion that voter turnout among Hispanics increased in Georgia following enactment of its strict voter ID law is simply not true.

According to the GA Secretary of State,Georgia’s Hispanic turnout (calculated as a percentage of registered voters) was lower in 2010 than in 2006, and it was lower in 2008 than in 2004. See table below:

The number of Hispanic voters was greater in the 2010 election than in the 2006 election, and in the 2008 election than in the 2004 election, as the total population of registered Hispanic voters increased by 73.9 percent and 144 percent, respectively. However, there was a slight reduction in the percentage of voter turnout for Hispanics between presidential election years 2004 and 2008 and non-presidential election years 2006 and 2010.    

While simple turnout numbers from a single state cannot tell us exactly what impact new voter restrictions have on voter turnout, it’s clear that in Georgia, the percentage of minority voter turnout has not increased following enactment of its strict voter ID law.

Strict voter ID laws are absolutely the wrong policy direction for this country. Voter participation rates across all racial, ethnic and socio-economic are dropping each election year. Georgia has seen voter participation rates in the fastest growing ethnic population over the past decade stay flat or decline.  As we consider what is best for America, increased voter participation is essential to restoring faith in our democracy and strict voter ID laws that fail to solve any real problems are wrong for America.

Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter ID

Voting Newsletter: DOJ Rejects Texas Voting Law

By Erik Opsal – 03/13/12

This is the Brennan Center's new voting newsletter. Check back for bi-weekly updates on the latest voting news. Encourage your friends to sign up, here.

Latest Developments

Justice Department Rejects Texas Voter ID Law

The Department of Justice objected to Texas’ voter ID law Monday, determining the law would discriminate against minority voters, particularly Hispanics.

“Even using the data most favorable to the state, Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver’s license or a personal identification card,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said in a letter to the Texas director of elections.

The same day, the Brennan Center and other legal groups moved to intervene to stop the restrictive photo ID law, which will also be reviewed in federal court. The motion, on behalf of the Texas NAACP and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, argues the law erects unnecessary barriers to voting and disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of minority voters.

“Decades ago, our nation passed the Voting Rights Act to combat this kind of discrimination,” said Brennan Center Senior Counsel Myrna Pérez. “We urge the federal court to stand up for voters by blocking this law.”

This news comes just days after a Houston Chronicle analysis found that Texas’ voter ID law “could affect as many as 2.3 million registered voters.” (Image source: Houston Chronicle)

State Updates

Pennsylvania – The state Senate passed a voter ID bill, which the House is expected to vote on today. Opponents of the bill are still fighting, saying it limits a basic right. Read more here and here. Read an op-ed opposing the law from Keesha Gaskins, senior counsel at the Brennan Center.

Wisconsin – A Dane County judge ruled Wisconsin’s voter ID law unconstitutional on Monday and “permanently barred further steps” to enforce it. This comes one week after another judge, in a separate lawsuit, temporarily blocked the law before the April 3 presidential primary. Read the Brennan Center’s statement. Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced he will appeal the decision.

Meanwhile, after a veteran protested at the polls because they wouldn’t accept his ID, a state Rep. introduced a bill to allow Veterans Affairs cards to vote. Lawmakers are also pushing the Seniors Vote Act, which would require the DMV “to take photos of seniors at their residence” for voter IDs.

Florida – A federal court is expected to make a decision soon on whether to block enforcement of the state’s voting law, which the Brennan Center’s Lee Rowland called “a mess.” Read more here and here. The Department of Justice objected to the law in a filing to the court.  A proposal to increase early voting was rejected in the state Senate.

Virginia – A voter ID bill passed the House and is headed to the governor’s desk for signature. Read the Washington Post editorial urging Gov. McDonnell not to sign the bill. Read more here.

Tennessee – Former Rep. Lincoln Davis was denied the right to vote on Super Tuesday after he was incorrectly purged from the rolls. Watch Davis on Current TV fighting back “against voter suppression tactics.”

National Landscape

• The New York Times and Washington Post applauded the Justice Department for rejecting the Texas voter ID law.
• Ari Berman at Rolling Stone: “War on Voting Targets Swing States.”
• CQ’s Eliza Newlin Carney wrote a cover story on “The Election’s Second Front” — restrictive voting laws. Also see the follow-up story on groups waging battle over voter ID laws.
• Ms. Magazine also wrote about the war on voting, highlighting the fight in Florida and citing extensively from the Brennan Center’s research.
• Will Oremus at Slate asked: Is Obama letting the Voting Rights Act “die before the Supreme Court kills it?”
• The National Urban League named voting as the number one issue for African Americans in 2012. See more at CNN and MSNBC.
• The NAACP will head to Geneva this week to discuss suppressive voting laws before a UN panel.
• RT News reported on America’s outdated voter registration system, speaking to Brennan Center expert Lawrence Norden.
• The New York Times commented on the lack of “dead voters” in South Carolina.
• Rachel Maddow highlighted a former Marine in Tennessee who challenged the state’s new voter ID law.
• The Nation discussed voting law changes in two swing states — Pennsylvania and Florida. 

New Data and Research

Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?

“Whatever the truth may be, the recounts and legal conflicts that followed Election 2000 raised serious doubts about the integrity of our system of elections. We are not interested in re-hashing the outcome of that election, but, like Joseph Harris over 75 years ago, we want to answer two questions: How did the United States come to accept voting systems and systems of election administration that could produce such unclear outcomes? And what can we do to improve things?” Read more about this new book from by Douglas W. Jones and Barbara Simons.

Other News

• A Tennessee Congressman introduced a bill to provide free IDs to vote.
• Election experts Rob Richie and Paul Gronke called for ranked-choice ballots as a way to uphold voter rights.
• Redistricting delays in Texas have caused havoc with the state’s voter registration cards. Read more at electiononlineWeekly.

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Tags: Newsletter, Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Challenges, Caging & Vote Suppression, Voter ID, Voter Registration Drives

Court Rejects Voter Suppression Efforts

By Nicolas Riley – 03/12/12

Almost 47 years to the day after a peaceful voting rights march in Selma, Alabama, ended in violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a federal court in Philadelphia struck a major blow against modern day voter intimidation tactics.

Last Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld a long-standing consent decree prohibiting the Republican National Committee (RNC) from engaging in underhanded campaign practices aimed at depressing voter turnout in communities of color. The consent decree, which arose out of a 1981 voting rights lawsuit against the RNC, bars the organization from using voter challengers, poll watchers, and vote caging plans to target and intimidate voters of color. It specifically precludes the RNC’s poll watchers from overstepping their role as election observers and prohibits them from asking voters for identification, filming or recording voters, and distributing literature about voter fraud penalties. After a federal district court denied the RNC’s request to dissolve the consent decree in 2009, the RNC appealed to the Third Circuit.

In unanimously rejecting the RNC’s appeal, the Third Circuit highlighted the continuing threat that voter intimidation poses to our election system. The court’s opinion described how poll watchers and poll challengers have the potential to disenfranchise lawful voters by causing delays, crowding, and confusion inside the polling place and creating a charged partisan atmosphere that can intimidate many new voters. The Brennan Center has highlighted these problems in the past and applauds the court for upholding this important safeguard against voter suppression. 

The court’s decision represents a significant victory for voters but also serves as a critical reminder about the need to protect against the kinds of pernicious voter intimidation tactics that the court discussed in its opinion. With the 2012 election fast approaching, it is important that state officials take steps to ensure that other political groups—not just the RNC—follow the law and refrain from using poll watchers to intimidate or discriminate against voters. In 2010, reports surfaced about political campaigns and other private organizations attempting to engage in the kinds of activities that the Third Circuit described. The Department of Justice investigated the poll-watching efforts of one such organization in Harris County, Texas, after fielding complaints that the group’s members were interfering with the voting process in predominantly black and Latino voting precincts. As these organizations ramp up their efforts to recruit poll watchers for the upcoming presidential election, election officials must be prepared to enforce the law and protect voters.

Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Challenges, Caging & Vote Suppression

Money and Politics: This Week in New York

By ReformNY – 03/09/12

Crossposted at ReformNY.

Every Friday, the Brennan Center will be compiling the latest news concerning the corrosive nature of money in New York State politics—and the ongoing need for public financing and robust campaign finance reform. We’ll also be linking to dispatches from around the country highlighting the national scope of this crisis. This week’s links were contributed by Matthew Ladd.

For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics and #fairelex.

New York Campaign Finance and Ethics News

1. Amidst the media’s recent focus on independent redistricting, New York City Council member Dan Garodnick encourages New Yorkers not to lose sight of the importance of campaign finance reform, highlighting the many benefits that the New York City public matching funds system has created for small donors, candidates for public office, and the voting public. Last week, Garodnick and 26 other City Council members sent a letter to Gov. Cuomo in support of his renewed pledge to support a statewide bill for public campaign financing.

2. Former US Representative Anthony Weiner claimed in an interview late last week that in the fall of 2010, he was privy to allegations that current Representative Michael Grimm (R—NY)—who has lately come under scrutiny for accepting questionable campaign donations—was himself attempting to extort political contributions from a well-known rabbi. Grimm’s attorney promptly released a statement denying the allegations, calling Weiner’s remarks part of a “Democratic smear campaign.”

3. The Republican candidate for the vacant seat of the New York State Assembly’s 145^th District, Mickey Kearns, is facing a formal complaint that he violated state campaign laws by accepting individual and corporate contributions for the upcoming special election over the legal limit. How the complaint will be handled by the state Board of Elections, whose enforcement power is widely seen as ineffectual, remains to be seen.

National Campaign Finance News

1. “Even in an age of super PACs . . . small-dollar fund-raising matters: It provides not only cash, but a way to engage volunteers, measure enthusiasm and organize get-out-the-vote efforts.” According to the New York Times, this explains a critical vulnerability of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, which has “relied overwhelmingly on his network of high-dollar donors.” By contrast, both Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich enjoyed bursts of small-donor enthusiasm following their primary victories. Unlike his competitors, Romney has failed to connect with grassroots donors, in large part due to widespread perception that Romney’s wealth obviates the need for contributions from small donors.

2. The Washington Post, however, notes that far from relying on small donors, the Santorum and Gingrich campaigns have been “kept on life support by billionaire supporters,” namely Foster Friess and Sheldon Adelson, “who have taken advantage of changes in campaign law to pour millions into independent super PACs.”

3. The Times also opined on Sunday that the upcoming presidential election will be heavily influenced not only by the economy, but also by “the huge sums of money sloshing around” in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United, and that this flood of contributions has led to the most negative Republican primary since the Watergate scandal broke.

4. John Boehner’s decision on Saturday to share the fundraising stage in Florida with Representative Vern Buchanan, who is currently under federal investigation by the FBI and IRS for failure to disclose business holdings and raising campaign money through straw donations, did not escape the Times editorial board, which noted that Boehner’s appearance simply proved that “once again the mighty campaign dollar trumps all.”

Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Public Financing, NY Reform

‘Misunderestimating’ Campaign Finance Reform

By Jonathan Backer – 03/08/12

In an article in the New York Review of Books, Washington Post reporter Ezra Klein discusses two recent books about corruption — one, by Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig, about how campaign contributions foster political corruption and second, by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, on how lobbying does the same. Klein argues that partisan polarization is more responsible for policy outcomes than the influence of money or lobbyists. Consequently, he suggests that campaign finance reform and more stringent lobbying rules would produce only modest changes in the way Washington works.

But it’s not clear that any set of campaign finance reforms or anti-lobbyist regulations would restore trust in government or ratchet down partisan polarization. Such policies, if they worked, would likely have more modest effects: a bit more trust in government, maybe, and a bit less of a reliance on lobbyists, hopefully.

It’s also the case that Abramoff’s form of corruption and Lessig’s theory of corruption do more to illuminate the workings of small issues in American politics than big ones. In that, they’re like quantum mechanics. Abramoff’s methods are fine for winning favors for small clients, and Lessig’s model goes a long ways toward explaining why politicians might listen when Hollywood signs up some high-powered lobbyists to tighten copyright protections, but neither is much of a help when it comes to the major clashes in American politics. You need a theory of general relativity to explain the big stuff. And that theory is partisan polarization.

Klein’s analysis narrowly focuses on the influence of money and lobbyists on legislators’ votes. In this, he overlooks the broader role of such forces in shaping the content of laws. Roll call votes represent only a fraction of legislative activity. One could imagine that money and lobbying play a much more substantive role in a committee’s markup of a piece of legislation. They also play a critical role in setting the legislative agenda, which probably impacts an industry’s bottom line more than the final up or down vote. Countless pieces of legislation never make it to the floor of either congressional chamber because of special interest influence. Still more legislation never gets an up or down vote in the Senate because of the mere threat of filibuster. Preventing legislation from getting a vote is simply a subtler approach to defeating legislation.

Lobbying reform and campaign finance reform — and public campaign financing in particular — have the ability to change the rules of the game in our democracy. Their impacts would be felt at every stage of the legislative process, not just at a final roll call vote. Moreover, while they may not singlehandedly combat distrust in government or partisan polarization, they are two among a constellation necessary policy prescriptions — including redistricting reform, voter registration modernization, and filibuster reform — that are necessary to revitalize and improve our democracy. No single reform has the capacity to fix Washington.

Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Public Financing

Interest Groups Buy Elections in the Dark

By Alina Mejer – 03/07/12

For decades, the tobacco industry fought tooth and nail against restrictions on cigarettes and smoking. Now, some of Big Tobacco’s soldiers have moved on — to partisan politics. One of their primary strategies is to attack political disclosure laws that ensure transparency of money in politics — so that deep-pocketed interest groups like Big Tobacco can try to buy elections in the dark.

The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF), a group founded by former tobacco industry executives, is a leader in this effort. While CFIF once worked to demonstrate the political downside of voting for anti-smoking laws, its mission statement now says it’s dedicated to protecting individual constitutional rights. But, in fact, CFIF’s attacks on political transparency undermine voters’ constitutional right to know who is trying to buy their votes.

CFIF recently sued two states — West Virginia and Illinois — to advance its efforts to invalidate laws that require groups seeking to influence elections to disclose information about their expenditures and donors. CFIF usually does not mention that it was among the top ad buyers within state Supreme Court elections from 2000 to 2009 — spending to the tune of $1,824,140. But, because CFIF would rather operate in the dark, it argues that disclosure laws violate the Constitution and serve no legitimate purpose. It is wrong on both accounts.

Voters are entitled to relevant information about those who are trying to influence elections. As the Brennan Center explained in a brief in the West Virginia litigation, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld robust campaign finance disclosure schemes because of the key governmental interests in providing the electorate with information, deterring corruption, and gathering data necessary to enforce other campaign finance rules. And, strong state disclosure laws have never been more important: A February 2012 report by the National Institute on Money in State Politics shows that individuals and organizations who gave at least $25,000 to federal super PACs in 2011 also donated an estimated $36.8 million to state campaigns between 2008 and 2010. Without robust transparency rules, voters have no way of following these dollars to their source and the political system is left vulnerable to corruption. 

For all of these reasons, the American people should fight back against CFIF’s crusade to hide election spending in a cloud of second-hand smoke.   

Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Disclosure