CLC Statement on Congressman George Santos’s Court Appearance and Plea

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WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congressman George Santos of New York pleaded not guilty to a 23-count, superseding federal indictment charging him with conspiracy, wire fraud, and submitting false statements and records to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), among a litany of alleged crimes stemming from his 2022 congressional campaign. Saurav Ghosh, Director of Federal Campaign Finance Reform at Campaign Legal Center, issued the following statement:  

“Voters have a right to know how candidates are raising and spending campaign money in pursuit of public office, and enforcement of federal campaign finance laws is essential to ensuring a transparent, fair, and representative democracy. CLC filed a complaint with the FEC in January against Congressman Santos, and referred that complaint to the Department of Justice, because it appeared that his campaign had blatantly and deliberately violated these laws.
 
The latest criminal charges against Congressman Santos indicate that while seeking to represent the public in a position of trust, the Congressman engaged in widespread fraud and theft, and sought to cover up these crimes by lying on official documents filed with the FEC. It is very encouraging that federal law enforcement agencies have pursued this case expeditiously, demonstrating a real commitment to upholding the values of transparency and accountability that are crucial to our elections. Candidates have a duty to obey the laws so that voters, their potential constituents, and the broader public can meaningfully participate in our nation’s political process.”  

On January 9, 2023, Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that recently elected Rep. George Santos, his 2022 campaign committee, Devolder-Santos for Congress, and treasurer Nancy Marks violated federal campaign finance laws. The following day, CLC referred the complaint to the Department of Justice.   

CLC’s complaint alleged, among other things, that Santos’s campaign falsely reported $705,000 in “personal loans” from Santos, and the information underlying Marks’s guilty plea appears to support that allegation: Prosecutors in Marks’s case have reportedly indicated that Marks and Santos conspired to fabricate $500,000 in loans made to the campaign in order to meet fundraising benchmarks. The superseding indictment against Rep. Santos includes new charges related to these false loans.   

Issues
Campaign Finance

Strengthening Democracy Through State Voting Rights Acts (State VRAs)

At a Glance

State Voting Rights Acts (state VRAs), which allow states to go above and beyond the floor set by the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) to protect and serve their voters, are an innovative solution to protect the freedom to vote in state and local elections. 

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Active
Updated
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Redistricting
Voting and Elections
About This Case/Action

Following the Supreme Court's disastrous decision in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 that gutted certain provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) and subsequent decisions that have further chipped away at the VRA, some states and localities rushed to pass anti-voter laws and election systems that disproportionately target voters of color. State VRAs push back against that trend, making our democracy more accessible to all Americans. 

State Voting Rights Acts (state VRAs), which are legislative packages of voting rights protections that push back against discrimination in voting and help to ensure that all voters in a given state can exercise their freedom to vote, can help create a more inclusive and accountable democracy. 

State VRAs can help fill gaps in voter access and bring us toward a democracy in which all voters have an equal voice. State VRAs can: 

  • Protect voters from racially discriminatory voting policies and election systems.  

  • Instruct courts to consider a variety of possible solutions to discriminatory voting policies and election systems and to prioritize community input instead of the solutions proposed by self-interested politicians. 

  • Reduce the need for lawsuits altogether by demanding that voters and local governments work together to fix discriminatory voting policies and election systems before resorting to legal battles.  

  • Prevent discriminatory election systems from being implemented in the first place by re-implementing preclearance. 

  • Allow states to go above and beyond the floor set by the federal VRA to protect and serve their voters. For example, the Virginia VRA criminalizes voter intimidation, and the New York VRA expands language access for voters with limited English proficiency. 

In the past five years, California, New York, Oregon, Virginia, Connecticut, and Washington have all passed state VRAs, and CLC is working alongside partners across the country, including in Minnesota, Maryland, Michigan and New Jersey, to expand that list. CLC also files lawsuits to enforce state VRAs on behalf of communities of color, including the first case brought under the Washington Voting Rights Act, to challenge a discriminatory election system in Yakima County resulting in a historic settlement. 

Our democracy works best when every voter can participate in it. State VRAs are a step toward making the vision of a government that is truly of, by and for the people a reality by making our democracy more inclusive and accountable to the people it was formed to serve.  

Associated Cases & Actions
Advocating for Fair Representation in Yakima County, Wash.

Campaign Legal Center and OpenSecrets sue the FEC for delayed response to transparency rulemaking petition

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – On October 20th, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and OpenSecrets filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for failing to respond to a 2019 petition filed jointly by both organizations requesting that the agency create new disclosure rules for “special-purpose” accounts maintained by national political party committees. 

Special-purpose accounts can be used to manage party headquarters, organize presidential nominating conventions and fund legal proceedings. Congress amended the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) in 2014 so as to enable these accounts and allow them to accept funds up to three times higher than the general contribution limit for national party committees (currently at $41,300 per year). These provisions, also known as the “Cromnibus” amendments, were created by an omnibus government funding package without any details on the permissible uses or reporting requirements for these accounts. 

“Voters have a right to know where parties and campaigns are getting their donations from so that they can make clear-eyed assessments of ads and other communications from those entities on their way to the voting booth,” says Trevor Potter, Campaign Legal Center President and Republican former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission. “Unfortunately, national political party committees currently have free rein to hide information about funds added to and taken from supercharged, special-purpose accounts because of the FEC’s failure to require transparency. The FEC must do its job and stop delaying voters’ access to the detailed and accurate campaign finance information they need to make informed decisions.”  

“The 2024 elections are around the corner, but the FEC continues to drag its feet on creating long-overdue disclosure rules,” said Sheila Krumholz, Executive Director of OpenSecrets. “OpenSecrets is proud to join Campaign Legal Center in calling on the FEC to finally ensure that voters have the information they need to understand who’s paying for our elections and to consider why. We are committed to shining a light on money in politics, and this lawsuit underscores the necessity of a transparent campaign finance system to do so. Without the FEC’s action, the American people are left in the dark about the true sources of funding behind political party committees.” 

Each national party currently operates up to seven special-purpose accounts. An individual can contribute up to $247,800 per account, or over $1.7 million total, to a single party for the current two-year 2023-2024 election cycle. But inconsistent reporting practices by national party committees prompted CLC and OpenSecrets to file the 2019 rulemaking petition (linked here) with the FEC, and two subsequent comments thereafter, to require detailed reporting of all monetary transactions involving these accounts with the goal of increasing transparency. 

The FEC’s non-response to CLC and OpenSecrets for over four years prompted both organizations to jointly file a lawsuit challenging the agency’s unreasonable delay in addressing this matter. 

As the sole agency tasked with enforcing federal campaign finance laws, the FEC needs to provide rules that ensure national political party committees can follow the transparency requirements previously amended by FECA. The current system makes it easy for these entities to pick and choose how they report, to the detriment of a transparent and more functional electoral system. 

Repeated failures by the FEC to maintain oversight over our campaign finance laws have resulted in an explosion in secret spending, rigging our politics in favor of special interests. Seeking to ensure that all Americans get the transparency they deserve, CLC and OpenSecrets are stepping up to prod the FEC into action to promote more accountability. 

Issues
Campaign Finance

Keeping Tabs on Special-Purpose Party Accounts (Campaign Legal Center and OpenSecrets v. FEC)

At a Glance

OpenSecrets and Campaign Legal Center filed suit against the FEC after it failed to respond to their Petition to promulgate new disclosure rules for “special-purpose” accounts maintained by national political party committees. CLC and OpenSecrets sued to force the FEC to do its job and ensure full transparency of the funds flowing into and out of these supercharged party accounts.

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Active
Updated
Issues
Campaign Finance
About This Case/Action

In December 2014, Congress amended the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) to allow national political party committees to create three new kinds of “separate, segregated” accounts for specific purposes — one for maintaining party headquarters, one for funding legal proceedings, and one for organizing presidential nominating conventions — and to accept contributions for these accounts of up to three times the party’s general contribution limit (which is currently set at $41,300 per year). Moreover, each national party now operates up to seven special-purpose accounts, three for the national committees and two for their congressional and senatorial committees, with each account subject to a separate, three-times-higher contribution limit. That means an individual can contribute more than $1.7 million to a single party in the 2023-24 election cycle by giving $247,800 to all seven of its special-purpose accounts.

The 2014 FECA amendments, sometimes referred to as the “Cromnibus” amendments because they were tucked into an omnibus government funding package, did not detail permissible uses of the new special-purpose accounts or contain specific reporting requirements for them. As a result, it was imperative for the FEC to issue new disclosure rules to ensure funds flowing into and out of the new party accounts would be reported accurately and in full. Instead, the FEC did nothing.

Thanks to the FEC’s inaction, political party committees have adopted a hodge-podge of deficient and inconsistent reporting practices that make it virtually impossible to track the funds flowing through their supercharged special-purpose accounts.

To rectify these transparency problems, CLC and OpenSecrets filed a rulemaking petition with the FEC in August 2019. The Petition requested that the FEC promulgate rules requiring national party committees to delineate the individual and aggregate transactions involving their special-purpose accounts, and proposed several specific regulatory changes that would help achieve such transparency. CLC and OpenSecrets submitted additional comments to the FEC in October 2019 and June 2020, reiterating the importance of the Petition and providing additional information about the transparency issues it described.

Multiple election cycles have now come and gone since Congress’ authorization of these special-purpose accounts, and still the FEC has yet to respond to the Petition or even begin a desperately-needed rulemaking process. Therefore, CLC and OpenSecrets filed a lawsuit in 2023, challenging the FEC’s unreasonable, four-year delay in responding to their Petition under the Administrative Procedure Act.

What’s At Stake?

Federal campaign finance laws protect every American’s right to participate in the political process by requiring transparency about who is funding parties, campaigns, and other political spending, so voters can properly weigh different speakers and messages and cast an informed vote. But FECA’s comprehensive transparency requirements are meaningless if the FEC doesn’t provide rules to ensure their proper implementation and enforcement.

Through its inaction, the FEC is permitting national party committees to effectively conceal statutorily required details about the funds contributed to, and expended from, their supercharged special-purpose accounts — and thereby depriving the public of the complete and accurate campaign finance information to which it has a right.

Instead of a functioning FEC that protects the trust of voters, American voters are left with a dysfunctional system that encourages a lack of transparency and allows corruption to thrive while wealthy donors wield outsized power over the political system. In the absence of FEC action, groups like CLC are stepping up to ensure that parties and other political actors are accountable to the public.

VICTORY: Federal Court Strikes Down Racially Discriminatory Galveston County, Texas Voting Maps that Denied Black and Latino Voters a Voice

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In a victory for the voters of Galveston County, Texas, a federal judge ruled today that Galveston County’s 2021 redistricting plan violates Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) and denies Black and Latino voters the equal opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. 

The decision characterizes Galveston County’s voting plan – enacted after the first redistricting cycle in which Galveston County was not subject to federal preclearance under the federal VRA – as “mean-spirited” and “egregious.”

In 2021, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), the UCLA Voting Rights Project and Neil Baron joined the ongoing redistricting fight, which began in 2013, to represent Galveston County voters against racial discrimination by Galveston County in its voting maps.

“Today’s historic decision underscores a simple fact: Galveston County’s Black and Latino residents deserve a voice in government.” said Mark Gaber, senior director of redistricting at Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “After decades of discrimination, this most recent voting map was just the latest blatant attempt to silence Galveston County’s Black and Latino voters. The court’s decision is a momentous step in addressing that injustice and ensuring that Galveston County’s Black and Latino residents can elect a representative who will best serve their communities.”

The case, Petteway v. Galveston County, Texas, was one of the first racial vote dilution cases to go to trial after the U.S. Supreme Court validated Section 2 of the VRA in June’s Allen v. Milligan decision.

Following 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder decision, Galveston County became one of the first jurisdictions to enact discriminatory voting maps. Then, in the 2021 redistricting cycle–the first that took place since Shelby County gutted preclearance–Galveston County once again enacted voting maps that ignored Black and Latino voters entirely, despite those voters comprising nearly half of all people in the county. 

The new map specifically targeted the county commission district known as Precinct 3. Under the old map, the precinct encompassed the heart of Galveston County, including an area where the majority of voters were Black or Hispanic. The new map added the largely white northwest corner of the county to Precinct 3, a blatant attempt to drown out the voices of Black and Latino voters.

Today’s decision agreed, noting: “It is stunning how completely the county extinguished the Black and Latino communities’ voice on its commissioners court during 2021’s redistricting.”

Now, the county has until October 20, 2023 to propose a remedial plan; otherwise the Court will impose one before the November 11, 2023 qualifying period for the 2024 Commissioners Court elections.

More information about the case can be found here. 

 

Issues
Redistricting
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