Yesterday, End Citizens United (ECU) President Tiffany Muller rebuked Thomas Mitchell’s latest column in the Elko Daily Free Press for his criticism of the DISCLOSE Act. In a letter to the editor, Muller touts the DISCLOSE Act as a critical step in advancing donor disclosure and restoring transparency in our elections.
Elko Daily Free Press: Letter: Congress needs to pass DISCLOSE Act
By Tiffany Muller | July 16, 2018
In this week’s column, Thomas Mitchell argues in favor of secret, dark money flooding our elections. For Mitchell, it isn’t enough that the special interests are spending millions of dollars to influence elections in Nevada. Rather, he takes the extreme position that it is actually a good thing that special interests can hide their identities from Nevadans who are bombarded by their ads in the mail, on TV, and online.
While the donors to Dark Money groups are kept secret, the purpose of their deceptive ads is clear: It’s to give mega donors, out-of-state billionaires and corporations a path to influence our elections in secret. Worse, it creates a loophole for foreign governments and corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to elect their handpicked candidates.
Rep. Jacky Rosen is a sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act that Mitchell maligns. The bill would shine a light on those trying to secretly influence our elections by requiring any group spending more than $10,000 on political ads to file a report within 24 hours. If you’re going to spend $10,000 or more trying to influence someone’s vote, you better have the courage to stand behind your argument.
That’s a point eight of the nine Supreme Court Justices agreed upon, even as the five-four majority ruled to open the floodgates on unlimited spending in elections in the 2010 Citizens United decision. Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative hero, wrote “requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.”
Right now, Congress is doing nothing to protect the integrity and transparency of our elections. In fact, Senator Dean Heller has repeatedly voted to make the system worse — further tilted toward the Big Money special interests who fund his campaigns. But if the people of Nevada can’t see who is financing the attack ads in this race, they shouldn’t be on the air. Congress should pass the DISCLOSE Act. It would be a critical step towards restoring the voice in our democracy to the American people.