News & Comment

Last week, Judge Robert Simpson of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania refused to halt a discriminatory new state law requiring voters to show photo identification. It was the judicial equivalent of giving democracy the bird. Since you’re significantly more likely to be struck by lightning than encounter an actual case of voter fraud, the law is really just a solution in search of a problem. Or, rather, a political party in search of a vote to suppress. read more »

It would be bad enough, as I reported last week, that 47 billionaires were responsible for the lion’s share of individual Super PAC contributions. It turns out that the Super PACs aren’t even the biggest players. The biggest players are the dark money PACs, which do not have to reveal the sources of their funding. If we just look at the television ads bankrolled by the top six sources of funding, we make a startling discovery, which Kim Barker reported on in these pages last week. The ‘dark money’ PACs are outspending everyone else. Crossroads GPS, founded by Karl Rove and backed by anonymous big-money donors, has bought negative attack ads against President Obama to the tune of $52 million! The Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity spent $20.6 million. The political parties and the Super PACs, which have to identify the source of their funds, are making a much smaller contribution. read more »

Last week, Florida's former Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer appeared on my TV show, and candidly discussed how the GOP in his state systematically pushed for harsh new voter ID laws in order to suppress the vote -- specifically that of African Americans and young people. He confirmed what some of us have long argued, and he provided a backdrop into what is transpiring all across the country in advance of the upcoming presidential election. Well today, in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, a judge ruled in favor of upholding the draconian Republican-supported voter ID law. This outrageous ruling is a slap in the face to democracy, and a slap in the face to all those who sacrificed so dearly in order to secure our liberties. read more »

Voter ID laws adopted in 10 states representing nearly half of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency will make it harder for hundreds of thousands of poor and minority Americans to vote and could decide the outcome of the 2012 election. read more »

Two conservative nonprofits, Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, have poured almost $60 million into TV ads to influence the presidential race so far, outgunning all super PACs put together, new spending estimates show. These nonprofits, also known as 501(c)(4)s or c4s for their section of the tax code, don't have to disclose their donors to the public. The two nonprofits had outspent each of the other types of outside spending groups in this election cycle, including political parties, unions, trade associations and political action committees. Super PACs, which do have to report their donors, spent an estimated $55.7 million on TV ads mentioning a presidential candidate, CMAG data shows. Parties spent $22.5 million. Campaign-finance reform advocates say the spending by the two organizations highlights the role anonymous money is playing in this election, which will be the most expensive in history. read more »

Voter ID laws create an unnecessary barrier to voting that disproportionately affects poor and nonwhite voters. If you’re going to have them, you should at least tell people that they're going into effect. But given the impetus of these laws, it's no surprise that few of the states that have passed them have made any effort to educate voters. The point of these laws is to decrease turnout among poor, nonwhite, young, and elderly voters—those more likely to vote Democratic—and thereby give Republicans an electoral advantage. Informing and preparing voters defeats the point. But conservative lawmakers are likely to keep pushing the laws, and voting-rights advocates could alleviate some of the harm by pushing for comprehensive plans to educate voters. Plus somewhere, a state might actually want to inform voters about what happened at the state capital. It all begs the question: What exactly would a good voter education campaign look like? read more »

We need more local broadcasting, not a return to the Fairness Doctrine, to enhance our media diet. Twenty-five years ago this month, the Reagan administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did away with the Fairness Doctrine. It ruled that the 38-year policy of requiring broadcasters to devote airtime to controversial public issues and to offer diverging viewpoints was obsolete because of the proliferation of cable TV stations. But the doctrine was not the panacea its champions believed it to be, and it wouldn’t cure what ails us today. Today, just a handful of media conglomerates hog both the TV and radio spectrum. And local TV news programming is shrinking, with enterprise reporting fading fast. Restoration of the Fairness Doctrine wouldn’t change this course. However, a move toward local ownership of broadcast media might bring us more information we need and a greater variety of meaningful voices and political sensibilities. read more »

The Public Interest Group Education Fund and the NGO Demos released a study in early August on the financing of the presidential campaign. They found that nearly 60% of the almost quarter of a billion dollars raised by Super PACs from individuals derived from just 47 people, who gave at least $1 million each (obviously some gave much more). 47 people. That’s democracy? The Super PACs are turning this presidential election into a toxic slamming match beyond anything seen in the recent past. These extremely wealthy and arrogant people are not giving this money for their health. They are expecting something for it. read more »

Since the mid-2000s, a small cadre of lawyers and activists has reshaped the role of money in American politics. Led by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), attorney James Bopp, Jr., and law professor and activist Brad Smith, this group has won a string of victories that have imploded campaign finance laws. But it's been rough going for the deregulators as of late. They've lost a slew of cases intended to gut existing political disclosure laws. They've failed to knock down bans on contribution limits. And despite their objections, the Internal Revenue Service has said it might revisit how it regulates dark-money nonprofit groups, which outspent super-PACs 3-to-2 in the 2010 elections and unloaded at least $172 million through June of this election cycle. read more »

Half a billion dollars and all we got is this lousy election? That's about how much has been spent in the presidential race so far, and by the time it's all said and done, the Center for Responsive Politics estimates the price tag will reach about $2.5 billion. That's a lot of money -- and much of it will have been spent on what is sometimes called "messaging." With a $2.5 billion bankroll, you'd think pretty much every important issue would get its place in the sun. Well, as it turns out, you don't always get what you pay for. Let's take a quick refresher tour of some of this campaign's more pointless diversions. read more »