Rightwing lobbies and dark money funders backing assaults on voting rights
The conservative campaign to curb voting rights has helped spur passage of bills in at least 18 states and, backed by big money, is now widening its scope across the US in a concerted effort to suppress the vote and favor Republicans, say election law experts and watchdogs.
The lobbying and media drive is aiming to spend tens of millions of dollars and is led by well funded conservative and dark money groups, some of whom are also pressing Congress to block Democratic-backed bills to protect voting rights nationally, say watchdogs and election law experts.
The right’s state and congressional blitzes to curtail voting rights, which have been stoked by Donald Trump’s repeated false claims about rampant fraud in last year’s elections, are misleadingly touted as improving “election integrity”. They have led to tighter voting laws in Georgia, Florida, Iowa and elsewhere. Similar measures are now being pushed in Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and other states.
The state lobbying efforts feature deep pocketed conservative bastions such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), Heritage Action, FreedomWorks and the State Policy Network, a loose-knit group of rightwing thinktanks, a number of which have received grants from the donor network led by the billionaire oilman Charles Koch and the Bradley Foundation.
Other influential players pushing stricter voting laws include the Honest Elections Project and the Opportunity Solutions Project.
The right’s lobbying tactics range from providing state legislators with model bills to paying for Facebook ads in many states that have included dubious information about some of the bills.
Evidence is palpable that the right’s crusade to curtail voting rights – which its proponents say is aimed at limiting voting fraud, even though there is little evidence of it in the US – is now expanding via more coordination among many groups.
For example, Heritage Action, which has touted plans to spend $24m on efforts to tighten state voting laws and to block congressional countermeasures, on 10 August hosted one of many joint calls this year for dozens of allies it has been working with, in a selfstyled “Save our Elections” blitz.
Further, Heritage Action has paid for Facebook ads and other media in several states – including Florida, Georgia and Arizona – some of which carried the misleading tagline “easier to vote, harder to cheat”.
In late July, Alec hosted a two-anda-half-day “exclusive” meeting in Salt Lake Citybefore Alec’s annual conference for an elite group of state legislators who are Alec members. They discussed ways to revise voting laws and compared notes about what’s been achieved already, according to an Alec email disclosed by the Center for Media and Democracy.
The Alec confab was co-sponsored by the dark money group, the Honest Elections Project, which launched in early 2020 and was the brainchild of the conservative fundraiser and ex-Federalist Society executive Leonard Leo and is led by Jason Snead, a former Heritage election policy guru. Snead has drawn fire for devising Heritage’s election fraud database, which the Brennan Center for Justice says has “grossly exaggerated” the extent of voter fraud.
The Brennan Center has calculated that the right’s efforts to change voting laws had by mid-July led to the passage of 30 laws that “restrict access to vote” in at least 18 states. The center noted too that some 400 bills have been introduced in 49 states to restrict voting access.
A Brennan Center analysis indicates that in general these laws make mail and early voting harder, impose harsher voter ID rules and make faulty voting roll purges more likely, among other changes. Most of the changes, experts believe, disproportionately affect likely Democratic voters, especially among communities of color and the less welloff.
Campaign finance and election watchdogs voice dismay over these sweeping rightwing campaignsto roll back voting rights, and urge national legislation to counter them.
“These efforts are part of a wellfunded, calculated, nationwide strategy of making voting harder for people of color, particularly in swing states,” said Adav Noti, a former associate general counsel at the Federal Election Commission and now chief of staff at the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center. “Basically, every measure the anti-voting cabal has pushed is designed to disproportionately affect voters of color. And their work has had some success in states like Georgia.”
Noti added the “good news is that Congress could end all of this anti-voter activity in an instant by passing laws to protect voting rights at the federal level”.
Other advocates voice similar concerns.
American Oversight, a watchdog group, has “unearthed evidence that shows the fingerprints of these groups on policymaking”, said Austin Evers, the group’s executive director. “They are orchestrating a state-by-state drive to restrict the freedom to vote and they are doing so successfully.”
Evers stressed that “Trump’s big lie disinformation campaign is breathing new life into longstanding efforts to curate the electorate for partisan ends, and dark money forces are making the most of the moment”.
The right’s multifront drive seems now to be focused on several states, including Texas and Pennsylvania, where bills are making headway that could curb voting rights of minorities and other voters – bills that are expected to benefit Republicans if they pass, say voting rights experts.
In Texas, Heritage Action has paid for ads on Facebook backing new voting curbs and helped fund an effort to spur public support for more voting restrictions, according to an analysis by Documented.
On 12 August, the Texas senate passed a measure, after a 15-hour filibuster by a Democratic opponent, that its GOP sponsor, Senator Bryan Hughes, touted as “simple, commonsense reforms.” But Democrats and voting rights advocates have said the measure would hinder voting by mail and impede voting by seniors and communities of color.
The Texas house still needs to pass the measure, but dozens of Democrats so far have blocked action by leaving the state.
On the national congressional front, Heritage Action and FreedomWorks seem to be lobbying to block Democrats from passing bills to offset the state measures, which Republicans seem to be banking on to help win back control of both houses.
FreedomWorks in the spring touted its plans to mount a $10m state and federal effort, with a focus on seven states, including Georgia and Arizona, to enact tough voting measures. To run its campaign, FreedomWorks has tapped veteran election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a board member of the Bradley Foundation, which has provided funds to rightwing groups working to restrict voting rights.
A FreedomWorks spokesperson has said that Mitchell is leading its “national election protection initiative”, to rally Senate opposition to a broad Housepassed reform bill and block another measure pending in the House named for the late Representative John Lewis, both of which would help protect voting rights nationally. Most Democrats have backed both bills to resist the Republican assaults on voting rights.
The stakes for voting rights advocates and watchdogs are high. “Democracy is on the line and this is an all hands on deck moment to fight back,” said Austin Evers.