Investigation: Leftist Groups Tapping $1 Billion to Vastly Expand the Private Financing of Public Elections
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Investigation by Steve Miller originally published by RealClearInvestigations and RealClearWire
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.”
Read the entire investigation here.
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Correction: 9:47 AM Eastern, Wednesday, March 15, 2023
The article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Because of an editing error, an earlier version misidentified the leader of Arabella Advisors. Its President and CEO is Rick Cruz; it is not led by its founder, Eric Kessler.
Investigation by Steve Miller – This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
