‘Dark money’ corrupts state’s initiative process
The initiative process that empowers Florida citizens to amend their own Constitution has been corrupted by secret political contributions. Even though the spigot of campaign dollars cannot be stopped, we should require public disclosure of those who keep it flowing.
The latest example was uncovered by Sun Sentinel reporters Skyler Swisher and Aric Chokey. They wrote last week that “at least $21 million in dark money — political spending that can’t be traced to its original source — has flooded initiatives vying for the 2020 ballot, leaving voters with no way to know who is really advocating for them.”
Some of that money appears, perhaps by intent, to be making it more difficult for other sponsors to hire the canvassers they need.
As the reporters found, two ballot initiatives have been funded entirely by secret donors: “Keep our Constitution Clean” and “Florida Citizen Voters.”
The “Keep our Constitution Clean” campaign calls for submitting all proposed amendments to voter approval in two successive elections, rather than in only one as now. It has raised $5.5 million entirely in dark money. If the lid could be lifted, it wouldn’t be surprising to find the same corporate lobbies currently openly opposing initiatives to raise Florida’s minimum wage or allow consumers to choose their electric energy providers.
The “Florida Citizen Voters” campaign would amend the Constitution to specify that only citizens can vote. That’s already the law, which no mentally healthy legislator would dare try to repeal, so why the amendment? No one but its sponsors knows, yet it has reported $8.3 million in dark money and has gathered more than the 766,200 signatures needed to make the 2020 ballot. It is registered to a UPS Store near Jacksonville.
One plausible suspicion is that Republican money is being invested in an issue that would help draw Donald Trump voters to the polls. Another likely theory is that its purpose is to starve other initiatives of the paid canvassers they need to hire.
Questionable money comes from nonprofit entities that are normally not required to report the sources of their revenue even when they contribute some of it to political committees that must disclose theirs under state law. This form of money laundering is legal so long as the “charities” don’t spend most of their income on politics. There’s suspicion that some do and that the IRS is asleep on duty. Congress could fix that if it had the will to do so.
“What is really needed,” says Ben Wilcox, research director of the public interest group Integrity Florida, “is the problem to be addressed at the federal level so that tax-exempt organizations doing political work can’t hide under the umbrella of ‘social welfare.’”
A succession of Supreme Court cases, beginning in 1976 and culminating in the infamous Citizens United decision of 2010, equates free spending with free speech and allows corporations to spend without limit by simply pretending not to coordinate with candidates. Short of amending the U.S. Constitution, there is no way for either Congress or the Florida Legislature to put a lid on the money.
The Legislature could, however, pry open the secrecy, simply by forbidding campaign sponsors to accept money from sources that don’t make public where they get theirs. The law should also require that contributions, including those from such secondary sources, be reported online when received.
Until that’s done, voters should be intensely suspicious of any initiative funded by dark money.
The initiative process in Florida was inspired by the long and futile struggle to get a modern Constitution and fair apportionment out of a Legislature controlled by a tiny minority of rural voters and special interest lobbies. It took the U.S. Supreme Court to get rid of the so-called Pork Chop Gang and make reforms possible.
Many of the new legislators were progressive and idealistic but, in retrospect, a bit naïve. They envisioned the initiative being used by armies of volunteers circulating petitions for specific reforms. But, of the 28 successful initiatives so far, only two have fulfilled the utopian vision — Gov. Reubin Askew’s “Sunshine Amendment” for financial disclosure and other political ethics reforms in 1976, and the ban on large fishing nets sponsored by sport anglers in 1994. Each depended entirely on volunteers to solicit the large and ever-growing numbers of required signatures to qualify for the ballot.
All the others have relied entirely or, for the most part, on paid canvassers to gather the signatures. The process has long since outgrown the amateurs to become an expensive, full-time professional operation.
The Supreme Court has never overturned any significant disclosure requirements and has actually encouraged them. But Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature didn’t propose any in this year’s new law that makes it harder in several ways for sponsors to collect the initiative signatures they need. The Legislature should also relax the law that keeps petition canvassers, along with other campaigners, 150 feet away from any polling place.
It is hard to imagine any purely volunteer effort succeeding under those conditions. Clearly, sponsors will continue to need large amounts of money, but the public deserves to know who’s giving it, and why.