John,

Last Thursday, we sued the Federal Election Commission for their failure to take action against Freedom Vote, an Ohio-based dark money group that has repeatedly violated campaign finance laws.

Freedom Vote is organized as a “social welfare” organization, which means they don’t have to disclose their donors—but also that their primary purpose can’t be politics or elections. However, the vast majority of Freedom Vote’s spending from 2014 to 2018, when we filed our FEC complaint, was intended to influence federal elections through campaign ads, donations to super PACs and opposition polling. That means that Freedom Vote is required to register as a political committee—and to disclose their donors. We filed an FEC complaint in 2018 saying exactly that.

Despite incredible amounts of evidence that Freedom Vote broke the law, the FEC took no action and dismissed CREW’s complaint. That’s why we’re suing—because what good are campaign finance laws if dark money groups are allowed to violate them with impunity? Read more here.

Our campaign finance system is undoubtedly broken. We need stronger laws. But we also need our top campaign finance regulator to hold groups and campaigns accountable when they break the laws we already have. When they fail to do their job, we’re going to hold them accountable in court.

Thank you,


Donald Sherman
Vice President and Chief Counsel, CREW

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