Read End Citizens United Executive Director Tiffany Muller’s op-ed in the Denver Post.
By Tiffany Muller
August 11, 2016
Intelligence experts agree that all signs suggest the Russian government is using cybercrime to meddle with elections. American citizens should also be concerned that a much easier way for Russia to exert its influence already exists — it could be secretly trying to buy our elections.
It’s true that foreign nationals and governments are prohibited from contributing to candidates and political committees. However, the confluence of loopholes in our election law and misguided Supreme Court decisions has allowed for an opening for anyone banned from donating — including foreign governments and nationals — to spend unlimited amounts of money in U.S. campaigns. And they can keep that spending secret.
Instead of contributing directly to a candidate or political committee, which requires reporting, foreign nationals have other avenues to funnel money into elections. Citizens United and a series of similar decisions by the Supreme Court have allowed for unlimited contributions to super PACs. Those contributions often come from “ghost corporations” or from certain types of non-profit groups that don’t disclose their sources of funding.
Ghost corporations are essentially hollow shells — a name and address of a business on paper — that do nothing more than conceal the identity of their funders. Then, they can pass anonymous money along to super PACs. End Citizens United helped expose one such ghost corporation earlier this year.
Whether it’s a check for $10, $10,000, or $10 million, an investigation to find the origin of a super PAC donor can end with a business that produces no product, has no employees, no clients or customers or physical structure, but that has tens of millions of dollars to spend on American politics.
Those dollars can go a long way to prop up candidates who support a pro-Russia agenda, such as refusing to defend NATO allies from Russian attack or “looking into” recognizing Crimea as Russian territory.
Whether these dollars are flowing from an organized criminal enterprise in the U.S. or a foreign country like Russia or China, Americans should be alarmed at the ease with which these groups can anonymously spend hundreds of millions of dollars in our campaigns.
Election nights are often nail biters, sometimes so close they stretch on for days — think Colorado’s 2010 Senate race or the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential election — and we can’t afford any measure of foreign meddling.
In many cases, including states like Colorado, Arizona and Massachusetts, laws and enforcement are just as feeble and secret money continues to rise. By contrast, in places like California and Montana, legislatures have taken action. California has seen a decline in dark money since 2010. Washington would do well to follow that lead.
We should encourage our representatives in Congress to support stronger disclosure laws as well as enhanced, coordinated efforts by federal agencies like the IRS, Federal Election Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission to uncover this secret spending. They should also call for the reversal of Citizens United and other mistaken Supreme Court rulings that have created this problem, either through a constitutional amendment or a reversal from a new Supreme Court majority that understands the damage these decisions have caused.
Russia may be hacking into organizations like the Democratic National Committee and releasing stolen data to boost the Trump campaign. It may even be preparing to hack our voting machines. But loopholes the size of the Ukraine exist in our campaign finance law, and the simpler and easier way for Vladimir Putin to influence our elections and our government is to exploit them to buy influence.
Members of Congress who have delayed action to close these loopholes have taken a catastrophic risk with our economic and national security. It is their duty to protect the fundamental integrity of our elections and ensure we have a government that reflects the will and interests of the American people. Every American citizen should hold them to those high standards, which are intrinsic to the foundations of our democracy.
Tiffany Muller is executive director of End Citizens United PAC.