[The efforts help explain the unprecedented tidal wave of
restrictive voting laws that spread across Republican-controlled
states in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. ]
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RIGHTWING GROUP POURS MILLIONS IN ‘DARK MONEY’ INTO US VOTER
SUPPRESSION BID  
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Brendan Fischer and Ed Pilkington
January 17, 2023
documented.net
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_ The efforts help explain the unprecedented tidal wave of
restrictive voting laws that spread across Republican-controlled
states in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. _

Expose Dark Money, by Free Press Pics (CC BY-NC 2.0)

 

_This article was produced in partnership with The Guardian_

The advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative
think tank based in Washington, spent more than $5m on lobbying in
2021 as it worked to block federal voting rights legislation and
advance an ambitious plan to spread its far-right agenda calling for
aggressive voter suppression measures in battleground states.

Previously unreported 2021 tax filings from Heritage Action for
America, which operates as the foundation’s activist wing, shows
that it spent $5.1m on contracting outside lobbying services. The
outlay comes on top of $560,000 the group invested in its
own in-house federal lobbying efforts
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year, as well as registered lobbying by Heritage Action staffers in at
least 24 states.

The 990 tax filing
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obtained by the watchdog group Documented
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the pivotal role that Heritage Action is increasingly playing in
shaping the rules that govern US democracy.

The efforts help explain the unprecedented tidal wave of restrictive
voting laws that spread across Republican-controlled states in the
wake of the 2020 presidential election. The Brennan Center reported
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more voter suppression laws were passed in 2021 than in any year since
it began monitoring voting legislation more than a decade ago.

The expenditures also signal a dramatic increase in Heritage
Action’s advocacy activities. In 2020, Heritage Action had reported
no spending at all on outside lobbying.

Heritage Action, whose board includes the Republican mega-donor
Rebekah Mercer, is set up as a 501(c)4 under the US tax code which
exempts it from paying federal taxes. It operates as a “dark
money” group, avoiding disclosing the sources of its total annual
revenue of over $18m.

In the past two years the organization through its public messaging
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echoed Donald Trump’s lie that US elections are marked by rampant
fraud. A private plan prepared by Heritage Action last year set out a
two-year, $24m “election integrity” strategy.

The plan, obtained by Documented, proposed a two-pronged approach that
would work to block moves by Democrats in Congress to bolster voting
rights while at the same time pressing Republican-controlled states to
impose restrictions on access to the ballot box. It said: “Where
Democrats hold power, we must defend against bad policy. Where
conservatives and our allies are in power, we must advance changes
that protect the lawful votes of Americans.”

The Heritage Action plan, which was first reported by the New York
Times
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is being published by the Guardian for the first time.

Part of Heritage Action’s two-year strategy is to promote what it
calls “model election laws”, focusing initially on eight
battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan,
Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin. In a private meeting with donors in
Tucson, Arizona, in 2021, the group’s executive director, Jessica
Anderson, boasted about the role Heritage Action had played in
pressing Republican-controlled legislatures to impose strict
restrictions on voting, including limits on mail-in voting and early
voting days.

In a video of that meeting obtained by Documented, Anderson told the
donors
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the group acted “quickly and quietly”, bragging that “honestly
nobody noticed” their behind-the-scenes influence. Heritage Action
staff have registered to lobby in at least two dozen states.

The laser-like focus on key swing states like Georgia appears to have
had an impact. The New York Times found that one-third of the 68
voting bills
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in Georgia in 2021 contained policy measures and language that aligned
closely with proposals from Heritage Action.

The group has publicly claimed that it had a hand in advancing 11
voting bills in at least eight states in 2021, though in some cases
legislation was passed in only one chamber or went on to be vetoed by
the state’s governor.

Heritage Foundation, under the auspices of its elections supremo Hans
von Spakovsky, curates an “election fraud database
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errors, omissions and mistakes made by election officials, but
it presents incomplete and misleading information
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underscores how exceptionally rare fraud is within the US system.

Its records stretch back 40 years, a period in which billions of votes
have been cast. Yet the database records only 1,402 “proven
instances of voter fraud” – a “molecular fraction” of votes
cast nationwide, according to the Brennan Center for Justice
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The newly-disclosed tax filings also show that Heritage Action ramped
up its spending on advertising as it sought to influence lawmakers and
the public around its controversial voting agenda. In 2021, the
organization reported paying $6.1m to outside contractors for
“marketing and advertising” – a sharp rise from $1.8m the
previous year.

Among the top contractors employed by Heritage Action was CRC
Advisors, the consulting firm tied to Leonard Leo, a chairman of the
Federalist Society who is best known for his decades-long campaign to
pack federal courts with right-wing judges. CRC Advisors was paid over
$797,000 for “marketing and advertising” in 2021.

Some of that ad spending was targeted in Georgia. After that state’s
2021 restrictive voting law caused a backlash from businesses and led
Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game from Georgia to
Colorado, Heritage Action spent nearly $1m 
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TV ads defending the law aired on CNBC and local TV stations
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The group also spent nearly $500,000 on Georgia TV and digital ads
during the MLB All-Star Game
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and spent at least $700,000 more on ads
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the Georgia bill’s passage.

On the federal level, Heritage Action also ran ads in West Virginia,
Arizona, Montana and New Hampshire
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the Democratic senators in those states to oppose reforming the
filibuster to pass democracy reform legislation with a simple
majority. “It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment,” Anderson said of
potential filibuster changes at the April 2021 donor summit.

Heritage Action was formed in 2010 out of the right-wing policy empire
embodied in the Heritage Foundation, which dates back to 1973. The
foundation was created by Paul Weyrich, a richly networked
conservative who wanted to inculcate small government, anti-regulation
ideology at both federal and state level.

From the start, restricting access to voting was a core part of
Weyrich’s mission. In 1980 he infamously articulated his thinking by
saying: “I don’t want everybody to vote … Our leverage in the
elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

_Brendan Fischer [[link removed]]
([email protected]
[[link removed]], @BRENDAN_FISCHER
[[link removed]]) is Documented's Deputy
Executive Director. He is a lawyer with expertise in campaign finance
and government transparency issues. Brendan has authored op-eds for
publications such as the New York Times and Washington Post, and
regularly appears as an expert on print, radio, and television
outlets, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National
Public Radio, MSNBC, CNN, and numerous other outlets. He was
previously the Director of Federal Reform at Campaign Legal Center._

_Ed Pilkington ([email protected]
[[link removed]], @EDPILKINGTON
[[link removed]]) is chief reporter for Guardian US.
He is the author of Beyond the Mother Country._

_Documented is an investigative watchdog and journalism project
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_We believe that hard-hitting, investigative journalism is needed now
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* Dark Money
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* voter suppression
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* Heritage Foundation
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