Today, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced her plans to make the raw data behind California’s lobbyists and campaign finance database available, online, on one spreadsheet available to the public and updated daily.

Secretary Bowen’s announcement is a reversal from a position she has long held since  Common Cause began asking for this disclosure in 2011.  This could not have been possible without the pressures imposed from groups such as California Common Cause, Maplight, as well as the Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee.  Of course, Secretary Bowen deserves lots credit for listening to our coalition’s concerns and ensuring this information is available to the public. Other state agencies should follow her in her footsteps and make public data, well, public.

“Great credit goes to Secretary Bowen for recognizing the importance of this data set,” said Daniel G. Newman, Co-Founder and President of MapLight. “It’s not just a small feature that she’s adding—it’s a great public access victory and a quantum leap forward for transparency.”

Currently, the information is available on a CD-ROM upon request and for a $5 fee.  This new disclosure will allow raw data to be made available 24 hours a day in a single spreadsheet. Raw data disclosures will allow the public to follow and keep track of money in politics, and for watchdog groups like ourselves, to more effectively hold the people in power more accountable.

Full list of coalition partners that made this happen: Common Cause, MapLight Around The Capitol, California Forward, California Newspaper Publishers Association, Courage Campaign, Global Exchange, Los Angeles Times, Rootstrikers, The Sacramento Bee, Sunlight Foundation, and Senator Leland Yee.

Nothing shines a light on problems quite like a scandal. If we’re lucky, it means that we take a closer look at not only the issue that makes the headlines, but the issue ecosystem. The recent back and forth about IRS incompetence regarding screening 501 (c)4 groups has prompted a secondary discussion about the very nature of many of these groups – that, increasingly, they are being used as vehicles to the hide the money raised to buy elections.

In Colorado and Washington DC, strong campaign finance laws were passed to rein in Big Money’s influence on elections.  Now those laws are under attack from powerful interests who aren’t afraid to get creative when it comes to hiding their actions. To make matters worse, they are supported by an out of touch and activist Supreme Court.

The people get it, but our leaders don’t.  Just look at the lack of action by the Colorado congressional delegation after explicit instructions from their voters to do something about the problem of money in politics. As the Denver Post’s Curtis Hubbard reminds us, 74% of Colorado voters said yes to Amendment 65.

I don’t mean to excuse or even ignore the IRS’s loathsome targeting of the conservative groups, but the role of unchecked money in politics also merits scrutiny.

Colorado voters last year tasked our congressional delegation with doing something about the issue.

Amendment 65, which directed the lawmakers to support a constitutional amendment that would rid our system of unlimited spending by corporations and labor groups, was supported by nearly 74 percent of voters.

How amazing is that?

You could ask if John Elway is the best quarterback in Denver Broncos history and very likely not get 3 out of 4 people to agree (silly Tebow fans, but I digress).

The Denver Post, Hubbard: Tax-exempt politics, May 19, 2013. 

The fact that there has been little to no response on Amendment 65 is an indication that our elected representatives are no longer fully representing us. Its not too late for our congressional delegation to stand up for their constituents and fight back against big money in politics.  I hope our congressional delegation is reading.

Submitted by: Corie Tanida, Project Coordinator, Common Cause Hawaii

On Monday, May 13, 2013 Hawaii Public Radio and Common Cause Hawaii hosted a discussion group to review the 2013 legislative session, called The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  It was also my first day on the job as Project Coordinator for Common Cause Hawaii.

Thankfully, the 30+ participants were knowledgeable and kind.  It was not only easy to meet new people, but to listen to their ideas and experiences with the legislative process.  There were four guest speakers who talked about the democracy-related bills they worked on, and shared their experiences with the 2013 session: Kory Payne (Voter Owned Hawaii), Burt Lum (Hawaii Open Data), Gerald Kato (Media Council Hawaii), and Representative Chris Lee.  Kory, Burt and Gerald spoke passionately about bills that they worked to get passed, ranging in subject from HB622, the Media Shield Law to the HB1481 partial public funding of political campaigns.

From left to right: Gerald Kato (Media Council Hawaii), Rep. Chris Lee, Burt Lum (Hawaii Open Data), Kory Payne (Voter Owned Hawaii), Carmille Lim (Common Cause Hawaii), and Beth Ann Kozlovich (Hawaii Public Radio)

In general, most bills die and do not become law.  Other times, it takes years to pass a bill. This is typically because the legislative process can be a complicated process.  In a nutshell, the legislative process includes having the bill introduced, scheduled for hearings, negotiating amendments, and having legislators agree to those amendments. If the bill makes it through all of that, the process is then repeated in the other legislative chamber.  Then, if both chambers have passed the bill, their versions are usually different and the Senate and the House must work together to come up with one unified version.

Unfortunately for Kory and Gerald, although they have worked for many sessions to promote their bills, they were unsuccessful in having their bills passed in the 2013 legislative session. On the other hand, 2013 was Burt’s first legislative session, and he successfully helped pass HB632 on Open Data.

It was interesting to hear all of their stories about the process, which involved a lot of educating legislators and the public on the importance of a bill, compromises made, and last minute negotiations between legislators, which Rep. Lee was able to shed more light on.   While I could attempt to re-tell Kory, Burt, Gerald, and Rep. Lee’s stories, I don’t think I could do it justice and explain things as in-depth or as passionately as they did.  In this blog post, I can’t accurately describe Kory’s disappointment and determination, or Burt’s excitement and enthusiasm to move on to the next step toward implementing Open Data,  or even Gerald’s frustration with the legislative process.  So, if you happen to see the speakers, I’d recommend you asking them what their experience was like, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to enlighten you.

Highlighted bills in Good, Bad, and Ugly event

You can visit www.commoncause.org/HI for a link to the full report of remaining bills that have passed the Legislature and are with the Governor for his consideration.

Corie Tanida, Project Coordinator, Common Cause Hawaii

I’d also recommend following us on Twitter- @CommonCauseHI and Facebook- Common Cause Hawaii.  It’s an easy way to get involved, and you can be the first to know about our future events—mixers, film screenings, workshops, and more.  If you’d like to help with the planning of events, or volunteering to work on Common Cause policy work, feel free to email me at ctanida [at] commoncause [dot] org or Tweet me at @CorieCCHI. You don’t have to be an expert in politics, or know anyone before participating.  As long as you have an open mind and are willing to listen, I can guarantee it’ll be an interesting, educational, and maybe even motivating experience.

All in all, not bad for my first day.

Some of the engaged audience members

Some of the engaged audience members

Some of the engaged audience members

The Internal Revenue Service’s apology for subjecting certain Tea Party groups to extra scrutiny merits the widespread attention it is receiving if political bias motivated the audits. The President himself called the emerging scandal “outrageous,” and leaders from both political parties agree. So does Common Cause. More information will soon come to light, because the Treasury Department’s Inspector General is preparing to release a report on its own months-long investigation, which may drop as soon as this week.

Meanwhile, IRS officials are steeling themselves for the hot seat, as they should.  Chairman Camp announced late Monday that the Ways & Means Committee in the House will begin hearings into the matter as soon as Friday.  Senators McCain and Levin announced in a joint statement that the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will postpone its tentatively scheduled June hearing into lax IRS enforcement of partisan nonprofit groups so that it can expand its investigation into the issues raised by the IRS’s apology. Senator Baucus intends to hold hearings in the Finance Committee, too.

But the apparent actions of IRS officials to prioritize certain (namely, conservative) organizations for audits is only part of the scandal. While Common Cause strongly supports an independent and thorough review of the IRS’s actions, the hearings should also account for the agency’s failure to enforce the law against political front groups masquerading as social welfare organizations. In other words, these hearings must not be used as a Trojan horse to undermine the IRS’s responsibility to impartially enforce the law governing nonprofit political spending.  Emphasis on impartially, with equal emphasis on enforce.

Leaked portions of the forthcoming Inspector General’s report support a finding that senior IRS officials were struggling with how best to vet the massive influx in 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization applications just as the Tea Party rose to prominence, widely credited with flipping control of the House of Representatives in 2010 by intervening in electoral races.

To qualify as a 501(c)(4), the organization’s primary purpose must be the furtherance of “social welfare” and the common good – something that the law expressly says does not include intervention in political campaigns.  But that hasn’t stopped corporations and billionaires from forming these tax-exempt groups that flout the law, funneling secretly-sourced money into our elections for the sole purpose of providing donor anonymity.  A 501(c)(4) is under no legal obligation to reveal its donors.

Setting up a 501(c)(4) is actually quite simple. The law allows these nonprofits to “self-declare,” submit the IRS application, and immediately begin  spending on political ads, even before the IRS advises the group on the status of their application, which can take years.

Between 2010 to 2012,  applications for 501(c)(4) status more than doubled to 3400. This tracks the explosion in 501(c)(4) political spending in the wake of Citizens United, decided in January 2010.  Social welfare organizations pumped over $254 million dollars into the 2012 elections according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).  That’s only $1 million less than what political parties themselves spent. And that doesn’t count 501(c)(4) spending on state and local races.

Anyone living in a swing-state during the last presidential election will remember the near constant commercials. Social welfare organization ads were easy to confuse with those of Super PACs – sometimes they have very similar names. Karl Rove’s nonprofit, Crossroads GPS, dumped $70 million into independent expenditures – commercials that called for the support or defeat of specific candidates. (Democracy21 and the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint about Crossroads GPS with the IRS, citing this $70 million as “prima facie evidence” that the group “is a campaign operation, not a ‘social welfare’ group.”). Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-backed political machine that also considers itself a social welfare nonprofit, spent over $33 million on independent expenditures.  Common Cause sent its own letter to the IRS last year about Liberty Central, a 501(c)(4) founded by Ginni Thomas, the Tea Party activist, lobbyist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. We requested an investigation into Liberty Central’s primary purpose, one of the very first social welfare groups to spring up in the wake of Citizens United. Liberty Central was heavily involved in advocating for the defeat of Members of Congress that voted in favor of the Affordable Care Act. Ms. Thomas traveled the country, referring to state-based Tea Parties as “satellite offices” and advocating for the election of specific candidates in those states.

If it seems like the overwhelming majority of social welfare nonprofit electioneering was on behalf of conservative viewpoints during the 2012 elections, you aren’t mistaken. CRP reports that among all independent groups that do not disclose their donors, over 85% of the hundreds of millions in spending supported conservative viewpoints, with just 11.2% spent for those that are liberal.

Of course, the fact that social welfare nonprofit spending was overwhelmingly conservative does not excuse the IRS from its obligation to apply neutral, impartial criteria when deciding which groups to audit. Neither does it justify an abrogation of the agency’s duty to enforce the law in the first place.

If you support our work to hold the IRS accountable, please join or renew your membership with Common Cause today.

Having pretty much abandoned enforcement of our campaign finance laws, the three Republican members of the Federal Election Commission have plenty of time on their hands these days. So it’s no surprise that they joined forces this week on a Politico essay that seeks to justify the FEC’s dysfunction.

The piece by Commissioners Donald F. McGahn, Caroline Hunter and Matthew Petersen urges readers to confront “the hard truth” that the FEC’s authority to regulate political fundraising and spending has been “severely narrowed by the courts.” The trio cast themselves as guardians of free speech, accusing those who support controls on political spending of overlooking “the obvious dangers of an unchecked federal agency regulating the political involvement of citizens.”

The real hard truth is that the FEC retains considerable authority but has been blocked from using it by the GOP commissioners. And there is no one – no one – in the reform community who wants the agency to operate “unchecked;” the only request is that it function as the vigilant and non-partisan watchdog Congress intended.

The Republican commissioners “have consistently blocked the agency’s professional staff from pursuing enforcement matters and have worked to prevent laws on the books from being properly interpreted,” veteran reform advocates Fred Wertheimer and Don Simon wrote in a report released in February. The failures are so pervasive that Wertheimer and Simon suggested the FEC be renamed the “Failure to Enforce Commission.”

Wertheimer and Simon documented a series of cases, stretching over several years, in which staff recommendations that the commission investigate possible campaign finance violations were thwarted by the three Republicans. In two cases, the evidence was so clear and damning that the alleged offenders – a non-profit group and a Democratic congressional candidate – already had agreed to pay fines when the GOP commissioners stepped in and shut down the investigation.

The commissioners’ Politico essay seeks to justify such decisions by citing the “shifting nature of campaign finance law.” Because the courts seem to adjust the law pretty regularly, they reason, it makes sense to take it easy on enforcement.

Of course, one reason the courts are constantly re-assessing the laws is that well-financed conservative activists keep filing lawsuits calculated to challenge and undercut them. By the commissioners’ logic, as long as individuals and groups keep the litigation train going, the FEC should let them do pretty much as they please.

Sadly, the Republican commissioners aren’t the only people contributing to the FEC’s dysfunction. The Obama administration continues to pay lip service to campaign finance reform while declining to advance that cause by nominating new FEC commissioners or proposing legislation to overhaul the commission and allow it to work.

All five commissioners are now serving beyond their terms, kept in place by the failure of Obama and the Congress to replace them. Given the open hostility of Congressional Republicans toward any regulation of political money, Obama nominees for the FEC would almost certainly be dead-on-arrival in the Senate. But that’s no excuse for the administration’s failure to submit names and use the GOP’s inevitable negative response to stimulate a real national debate on campaign money.

###

For years we have heard from disappointed and angry eligible voters who couldn’t vote as a result of confusing and antiquated systems. And for years we have been working to lower these barriers to voting. Today, we have come so close to making the voting process in Colorado one we can be proud of in the 21^st century. The Colorado Voter Access & Modernized Elections Act (HB13-1303) has successfully made it through the Colorado General Assembly and is headed for the Governor’s desk.

Since 2004, Common Cause has led a coalition of nonpartisan organizations known as Just Vote! Colorado Election Protection.  The goal of the program is to ensure that every eligible voter who wants to vote is able to do so, and that every vote is counted accurately.  To achieve this goal, the Just Vote coalition has placed nonpartisan poll monitors at polling locations in counties around the state, and has engaged in voter education, staffed a nonpartisan call center to answer voter questions and has developed a website that provides information to voters on their rights, where to vote and other issues.

Through this work, Common Cause has talked to thousands of voters about the challenges they have faced in casting their ballots.  During the 2012 election, we answered more than 4000 calls from voters of all political affiliations.  Challenges to voting aren’t a partisan issue—and the solutions aren’t either.

Here’s what we learned:

First, voting by mail, while increasingly popular, is increasingly confusing to voters.  Some elections are conducted by mail and others are not, so voters receive a ballot for one election but not the next. This confusion was compounded by the Inactive-Failed to Vote status and the fact that this status resulted in removal from the permanent mail ballot list. In 2012, nearly 40% of the calls and emails we received were from voters confused about the receipt or non-receipt of a mail ballot.

Second, significant registration problems as a result of registration deadlines, the need for registration updates for voters who moved and unintended clerical errors on the part of election officials prevented eligible voters from voting in 2012.  What is most notable about this item is that many of the problems we saw in 2012, we also saw in 2010, 2008, 2006 and 2004.  Many of these problems arose because voters had moved and, while they had filed a change of address for their mail, they had not updated their voter registration record.

House Bill 1303 is directly responsive to the problems Colorado voters face every election.

House Bill 1303 will modernize elections in Colorado.  The legislation has been negotiated and shaped out of a bi-partisan effort with county clerks who are committed to developing and implementing policies that are voter friendly and reflect sound election administration.  This law will remove significant barriers to participation in the electoral process by making both voting and voter registration more convenient and accessible for eligible Colorado voters.

First, by expanding voter registration, HB 1303 will make it easier for all voters who are eligible to vote to do so.  In this way, no one will be disenfranchised as a result of an arbitrary deadline.  The bill requires that all counties have a real time connection with the SCORE database and the death and felon records in Colorado in order to ensure access so that no voter votes more than once, and that all new applications are checked against current information that affects eligibility.  This is an important safeguard for election and voter integrity.

Under the Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act, every eligible voter can visit a polling center to register or update an existing registration with a new address – and then be given a regular ballot.  HB1303 simplifies Colorado’s confusing emergency registration provisions and ensures that voters, once entered onto the state rolls, stay registered so long as they continue to live in Colorado, and can make sure that once they’re a registered voter, they can move within the state and be confident they can always cast a ballot that counts.

In addition, the use of National Change Of Address (NCOA) data to update addresses of voters will eliminate the most common voter problem – where to vote after a move.

Second, by mailing a ballot to every eligible voter in Colorado, we will eliminate the confusion about when and whether someone is going to get a mail ballot.  We have seen the popularity of mail ballots in Colorado – more than 70% of the state votes by mail.  As a result, Colorado already has trustworthy election processes in place to verify signatures and ensure integrity in mail ballot elections.  These processes have been refined over the years and are functioning well. Voters who prefer to vote in person or want to drop their ballots off rather than mail them back will be able to do so.

Finally, the bill will eliminate the confusion surrounding Inactive- Failed to Vote voters and will ensure that they receive mail ballots in every election.  Only voters whose mail is returned as undeliverable will be treated as Inactive.  This will bring Colorado in line with the rest of the country in terms of how voters are treated if they miss one general election.

HB1303 will give Colorado citizens greater opportunity to participate in our elections by simplifying the process while maintaining full options for registration and voting.

The President nominated Tom Wheeler to replace Julius Genachowski as the next FCC Chair yesterday. Wheeler is a one-time bundler for the Obama campaign and a former lobbyist for the wireless and cable industries.

The telecommunications industry has heaped praise on him. That is enough to disqualify him for some people, but we think it’s too early to pass judgment. In the past he’s spoken or blogged in support of network neutrality and consumer protection – positions the likes of Verizon would disagree with. As Jon Brodkin of Ars Technica concludes, “Wheeler’s writing is nuanced enough that it’s hard to draw straight lines between his blog posts and his future as commissioner.” Indeed.

Ultimately, though, what matters is not the person who chairs the FCC, but how that person stands up for broadband competition, takes on the media monopolists, and makes political ad disclosure a reality.

“These are ambitious but necessary reforms. Their time is now. I look forward to working with Tom to achieve these goals. It will take innovative thought and regulatory courage to make them happen,” as former FCC Commissioner and Special Adviser to the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative Michael Copps put it yesterday in our statement.

Take a look at the letter Common Cause and more than 40 other public interest groups sent to President Obama last month, outlining the priorities for the next FCC chair.

A new report by Common Cause Massachusetts shows that limiting outside spending in last year’s U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts helped to increased electoral transparency, accountability, and fairness, and calls on the current Senate candidates Ed Markey and Gabriel Gomez to agree to limit outside spending in the current election.

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) paved the way for unlimited fundraising by independent political groups, outside spending in elections has skyrocketed. In the 2012 federal election cycle, outside groups spent a staggering $1.3 billion, an over 400% increase from both 2008 and 2010.

In an attempt to curtail this rapid influx of outside money in their 2012 race for U.S. Senate, U.S. Senator Scott Brown and challenger Elizabeth Warren reached a ground-breaking agreement, dubbed the “People’s Pledge,” which instituted a fine to be paid out from a candidate’s campaign funds should an outside group purchase radio, cable, or online advertisements that would benefit that candidate. The fine applied equally to negative and positive advertisements. Many were rightfully dubious that this voluntary pact would hold up given the election’s high national stakes. But it did.

Outside spending in Massachusetts made up just 9% of total election spending, compared to an average of 57% in 2012 competitive Senate races in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Ohio.  The Pledge’s success in limiting the degree of outside spending had huge impacts on secret money, big money, and negative advertising.

• The People’s Pledge increased the influence of small donor donations relative to big dollar donations. Small donations (less than $200) to the candidates outmatched outside groups by 3 to 1 ($23.5 vs. $8 million) in Massachusetts. On the other hand, outside groups in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Ohio outspent small donors to the candidates by more than 5 to 1 ($135 vs. $23.8 million).
• The People’s Pledge resulted in substantially greater public disclosure of political donors. There was 5 times more “dark”, completely undisclosed, money on average in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Ohio than in Massachusetts—$19.8, $13.6, and $14.1 million respectively versus $3.3 million in Massachusetts.
• The People’s Pledge resulted in significantly less negative advertising. Television advertisements in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Ohio were more than twice as likely to be negative compared to Massachusetts – 84% vs. 36% negative on average.

In short, the Pledge produced many desirable outcomes and deserves to be repeated in future races. Please join us in urging Ed Markey and Gabriel Gomez to negotiate a renewed pledge, click here.

To read the full “Plea for A Pledge” report click here.

Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein reported this morning about a letter to President Obama that we signed with six other watchdog organizations.  Unfortunately, Mr. Klein dismisses campaign finance reform as a “quixotic cause” because the White House will “never get the votes to truly change campaign finance laws,” rendering the President’s inaction, regrettably,  as making “perfect sense.”

Except it doesn’t make sense. Our letter specifies what the President can do without going to a hamstrung, gridlocked, filibuster-it-all, do-nothing Congress.

To cut to the chase, the President pledged to make getting control of money in politics a priority in his Administration. But although he famously called out the five conservative justices for their appalling decision in Citizens United and imposed some restrictions on executive branch hiring of corporate lobbyists, he has done very little to stem the tide of big money buying up public policy.

Here’s what he alone can do, as we said in our letter to the White House:

• Submit Federal Election Commission nominees to the Senate to fill the existing vacancies; this confirmation process begins with the President, not the Senate;
  • Sign this petition here asking him to so;
• Issue the Executive Order he initiated, but then dropped, that would have required government contractors to disclose their contributions to groups engaged in electioneering activities;
• Use the bully pulpit to speak out and educate the public on repairing the campaign finance laws, as he has on a number of other issues;
• Publicly support the effort to have the Securities and Exchange Commission require public corporations to disclose their campaign activities to their shareholders and the public;
• Publicly support better disclosure at the Federal Communications Commission regarding campaign ads being run by broadcasters.

At a time of unprecedented spending and rapid shifts in campaign finance law, we sorely need the leadership he pledged on these matters. The buck stops with you, Mr. President.