CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Last year's elections were the most expensive in history, and West Virginia lawmakers are being pressed to help a national effort to get the big money out of politics. During the next legislative session, clean-election groups will push lawmakers go on record for amending the U.S. Constitution to reverse the "Citizens United" decision. That's the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ended campaign spending limits for corporations and special interest groups.

A new report from the watchdog group Demos says political fundraising is dominated more than ever by big businesses and their wealthy owners. Adam Lioz, Demos' staff counsel, explains how it worked.

"The top 32 super-PAC donors, contributing an average of nearly $10 million each, matched all of the money that both President Obama and Mitt Romney raised from small donors, combined. That's $313 million, from at least 3.7 million people giving less than $200 apiece."

The Demos says the campaign finance system favors incumbents over challengers and grassroots candidates, and makes it impossible to track some donations, which don't have to be reported if they fall outside a certain time period before the elections.

Another report, released by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), says almost one-third of the outside spending reported to the Federal Elections Commission was by organizations that do not have to disclose the original sources of their funds.

Blair Bowie, a democracy advocate with the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, says voters didn't know who was really behind more than half of all presidential TV ads paid for by outside groups – and Congressional races were affected, too.

"In the 20 states we analyzed, 90 percent of outside spending on House and Senate races came from out-of-state groups."

This weekend around the country, groups are planning rallies and other events to coincide with the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

The Demos report, "Billion-Dollar Democracy," is available at www.demos.org. The U.S. PIRG report, "Elections Confidential," is at www.uspirgedfund.org. More Citizens United protest events are listed at www.moneyout-votersin.org.



get more stories like this via email

Control of the U.S. Senate could once again be decided in Georgia as a tight race between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker heads to a runoff.

Peach State voters are bracing for a four-week blitz of campaigning and massive spending as each candidate and his supporters pump record cash into the race.

So far, Warnock's campaign has spent $135.8 million, while Walker's has spent $32.4 million, according to data from the Federal Election Commission. Millions in outside spending are also expected to keep flooding the state.

Sarah Bryner, director of research and strategy for the group OpenSecrets, said the expenditure is par for the course.

"Georgia being a purple state is going to likely see huge amounts of spending in the future," Bryner projected. "So long as those races are the ones that have the potential to make or break the outcome."

This will be the second runoff for Warnock, who first won his seat in January 2021 in the most expensive congressional elections to date, drawing nearly $363 million. Other close-call contests in Arizona and Nevada could tip the scale for control of the Senate but for now, the Georgia race will be decided Dec. 6.

Neither candidate surpassed the 50% threshold to win the race outright, so they will be making their pitch yet again and Bryner pointed out it will take a lot of money to do so in Georgia and other contests around the country.

"Huge amounts of money, especially if this again is the race that makes the difference between a Democratic majority and a Republican majority," Bryner explained. "Every eye in the country is going to be on it and that means that the money will follow. "

As the race advances, voters can expect more high-profile notables to barnstorm the state including former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Walker, and President Joe Biden, who is supporting Warnock's return to Washington.

Instances of voter fraud are few and far between, but Ohio election officials want to ensure voters have confidence in the integrity of the system.

Frank LaRose, Ohio's Secretary of State, is launching a new Public Integrity Division to consolidate the office's current investigative work into campaign finance, voter registration, election law and cybersecurity irregularities.

LaRose explained his office lacks a dedicated team of professional investigators, and those tasks often fall upon local county boards of election.

"Elections administrators responsible for training poll workers and arranging voting locations and mailing out absentee ballots could tomorrow be asked to put on the investigator's hat and do an investigation," LaRose pointed out. "Naturally, that's not their skill set, and it's not what they're trained to do."

Some 31 contests in Ohio have ended in ties since 2020, with many others decided by a single vote. LaRose argued strengthening investigative capabilities will give voters greater confidence in a secure election system. The Secretary of State's Office has referred more than six dozen potential voter-fraud cases this year to local prosecutors. Democrats have criticized Republican LaRose for "wasting taxpayer dollars on a problem that doesn't exist."

The new division starts operations one day before Ohio's voter registration deadline of Oct. 11. LaRose noted a large number of absentee ballot requests are coming in, and voter registrations recently topped eight million.

"We're always working to encourage voter registration, but we also make sure that the rolls stay accurate," LaRose asserted. "So, it kind of ebbs and flows. We remove deceased voters from the rolls on a monthly basis; we make sure that people get removed from the rolls when they move out of state. So, going over eight million is something that we're really proud of."

He is also encouraging Ohioans to assist on Election Day. Ohio has close to 4,000 polling locations open for more than 12 hours, staffed by more than 50,000 volunteers.

"I always tell people, 'Think about how big Ohio Stadium is. If you're watching a Buckeyes game. That's half the seating capacity of that stadium just in poll workers.' Half of them are Republicans, half of them are Democrats, all of them are patriots that do this work of running elections," LaRose remarked. "And we need more people all the time."

Ohio has poll-worker recruitment initiatives targeting high school seniors, veterans, attorneys and others. LaRose also encouraged companies to give employees a day off work to volunteer, or nonprofit groups to create a fundraiser where volunteers donate their poll-worker pay to a charity.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Most West Virginians pay taxes on every dollar they earn, while large corporations and billionaires use tax loopholes to pay as little as zero in income taxes, and in turn use the money to pump tens of millions of dollars into political campaigns, according to a new report released by West Virginia Citizen Action Group in collaboration with Americans for Tax Fairness.

The report found almost half the nearly $190 million dollars raised by the House and Senate GOP super PACs in the first 16 months of the 2022 campaign cycle came from 27 billionaires.

Gary Zuckett, executive director of the West Virginia Citizen Action Group, said Mountain State residents end up footing the bill for roads and other local government services.

"Why does this make a difference to middle- and working-class West Virginians?" Zuckett asked. "The reason it makes a difference is that every dollar that billionaires and millionaires don't pay in taxes, that tax-dodging corporations don't pay on their profits, is our tax dollars that the working class has to make up to keep our government functioning."

Billionaire political donations in 2020 were nearly double the $682 million poured into campaigns in 2016, according to data from the OpenSecrets database. Monday evening, activists rallied in Charleston outside West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin's office, calling for the passage of climate and tax-fairness legislation.

Zuckett believes lawmakers should be focusing on major campaign finance reforms ahead of the 2024 presidential election campaign, including reforming the 2009 Supreme Court decision, which paved the way for unlimited political contributions by corporations.

"We need to fix the Citizens United Ruling," Zuckett emphasized. "We need legislation that said that corporations can't spend unlimited amounts of money in politics, buying our elections."

According to the report, the nation's billionaires increased their wealth significantly during the last two years of the pandemic, from a collective $2 trillion among around 700 individuals to more than $5 trillion dollars as of last April.