Nearly three-in-four voters want the Federal Election Commission to take a more active role in enforcing campaign finance laws and 83% support publicly disclosing political contributions to organizations.

Washington, D.C. – Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) released findings from two bipartisan polls where voters expressed overwhelming support for increased transparency in election-related contributions and for the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to take a more active role in enforcing campaign finance laws. The polls, commissioned by CLC, were conducted by a Democratic firm, ALG Research, and a Republic firm, GS Strategy Group.

“Voters have a right to know which wealthy special interests are spending big money to secretly influence our vote and our government,” said Trevor Potter, president of CLC. “Real transparency about who is spending big money on elections will mean more government accountability, less influence for wealthy special interests and less political corruption. The campaign finance laws currently in place to help everyday Americans understand who is trying to influence their vote are not consistently enforced by the FEC, the only government agency whose sole responsibility is overseeing the integrity of our political campaigns. The FEC regularly deadlocks and is currently operating without a quorum, so it cannot take any action against any lawbreakers during one of the most expensive election cycles in history.”

Key Findings:

• A majority of voters rate “corruption in the political system” as the most serious problem facing the country, even more serious than rising healthcare costs.
  • Independents are especially likely to see corruption as the nation’s most pressing problem.
  • 61% of voters believe that major changes need to be made to the country’s campaign finance system.
• Unlimited secret political donations and the influence of big money in our politics are also viewed as major problems, with even more expressing concern over them than over illegal immigration and stagnant wages.
  • Voters believe the problem of big money in politics is getting worse, with 74% saying that corporations and special interest spending on elections has increased over the past 10 years.
• 71% of voters want the FEC to take a more active role enforcing campaign finance laws, and there is at least two-thirds support for this across party lines.
  • The desire for a more active FEC is not just broad. It is also intense, with a majority of voters (51%) saying that it is very important that the FEC takes on a more active role in enforcing campaign finance laws.
• More than four-out-of-five (83%) of voters support public disclosing contributions to organizations involved in elections, with a majority of 56% strongly in support.
  • This intense support for public disclosure extends across partisan and demographic lines.
• Support for disclosing political contributions to specific organizations is also high, regardless of where the organization falls on the ideological spectrum.
  • Political partisans were just as likely to support disclosing contributions to organizations they were more likely to agree with as they were for organizations they were more likely to disagree with.

The failure of the FEC to enforce campaign finance laws has resulted in an explosion in secret spending, and our politics are increasingly rigged in favor of special interests. Voters overwhelmingly want the FEC to take a more active role in enforcing campaign finance laws and support increased transparency in election related contributions to reduce corruption and protect the voices of all voters.

WASHINGTON – Rudy Giuliani has been tasked with conducting U.S. foreign policy while retaining unknown private clients, and should be subject to the conflict of interest and other ethics laws that apply to federal employees. A new letter sent by Campaign Legal Center (CLC) to the State Department’s Inspector General requests an investigation into Giuliani and his potential violations of ethics laws.

According to the letter, Giuliani’s assigned role and diplomatic responsibilities rendered him an employee for purposes of federal ethics laws. President Donald Trump identified Giuliani as an official envoy to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Senior State Department officials understood that the president had given Giuliani formal responsibilities on U.S.-Ukraine relations, and deferred to him on substantial diplomatic matters. And Giuliani himself stated publicly that he acted with the support of the president and State Department.

“Giuliani has been afforded the privilege and power of federal public service, but he has not been subject to the vital oversight and accountability provided by federal ethics laws,” said Delaney Marsco, ethics counsel at CLC. “Rudy Giuliani has asserted that his Ukraine work was done solely as a defense attorney for his client, Donald Trump, but the facts – and Giuliani’s own statements – show otherwise.”

“President Trump assigned Giuliani a substantial foreign policy role, but at the same time, Giuliani continued to represent private clients, many of whom are not publicly known,” said Brendan Fischer, director, federal reform at CLC. “Giuliani’s prominent role on U.S-Ukraine policy issues means that he cannot sidestep the ethics obligations that require transparency behind the wealthy foreign or domestic interests that are paying him. We expect the agency Inspector General to take this matter seriously.”

Giuliani was assigned a central role in pushing Ukraine to publicly commit to investigations into Joe Biden and Burisma, a Ukrainian firm that employed Biden’s son Hunter – and into matters pertaining to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) – which were understood to be necessary preconditions for the release of U.S. taxpayer-funded security aid to Ukraine and for President Zelensky receiving the in-person White House meeting that he sought. These facts are central to this week’s public impeachment hearings.

COLUMBUS, OH – Today, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio issued a summary judgment ordering Ohio to discontinue its practice of disenfranchising eligible voters arrested and held in pre-trial detention in the final days preceding an election. Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Dēmos and the MacArthur Justice Center successfully demonstrated that Ohio’s system was denying eligible voters their First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

“Eligible voters who are arrested and detained pre-trial by the state in the days leading up to an election deserve equal protection from the U.S. Constitution,” said Jonathan Diaz, legal counsel, voting rights at CLC. “A person’s ability to cast a ballot should not be determined by the date of their arrest or their ability to pay bail. Secretary of State Frank LaRose should ensure that all of Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections are prepared to assist all eligible voters who are arrested and held in pretrial detention prior to Election Day to ensure that they can cast a ballot.”

"A person does not lose the right to vote simply by being arrested, and the Court's decision recognizes that a voter in jail receives the same protections as every other voter, and must be treated just like any other voter," said Laura Bishop, voting rights project attorney at MacArthur Justice Center.

“This is a landmark ruling both for voting rights and fairness in the criminal legal system,” said Chiraag Bains, Director of Legal Strategies at Demos. "The court held that our clients and the roughly one thousand eligible voters detained pretrial every election in Ohio cannot be denied their fundamental right to be heard in this democracy. This is a nationwide problem that disproportionately hurts voters of color and low-income voters, who are disproportionately policed, prosecuted, and detained. Every state should take heed of today’s order.”

In October 2018, CLC sent a demand letter to then-Secretary of State Jon Husted informing him of Ohio’s lack of policy concerning late-jailed voters and outlined options the state could pursue to rectify the situation.

After no action was taken by the Secretary of State’s office, CLC and its partners filed suit on behalf of Tommy Ray Mays II, Quinton Nelson, Sr., and all late-jailed voters in Ohio seeking access to the ballot and the ability to exercise their right to vote. In conjunction with the complaint, CLC and its partners also filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to allow individuals who were held in pretrial detention in county jails to exercise their fundamental right to vote by casting an absentee ballot in the 2018 midterm election. That motion was granted and the court issued a temporary restraining order allowing Mays and Nelson to vote on Election Day in 2018.