Campaign finance law allows outside groups like the NRA to make unlimited expenditures supporting candidates only if the expenditures are completely independent of those candidates.  To protect this independence, the FEC has rules prohibiting coordination between outside groups and campaigns, which include restrictions on how a vendor may work for both a candidate and an outside group supporting that candidate. Otherwise, the common vendor can act as a conduit to funnel strategic information to the outside group, and then that group’s expenditures are no longer independent.

But a set of media firms operating out of a single set of buildings in Alexandria, Virginia has functioned to help the NRA evade these rules. Evidence shows that a media firm called OnMessage set up a shell corporation called Starboard, located at the same address and with the same leadership; the NRA contracted with Starboard to produce its ads, and the candidates the NRA supported hired OnMessage. Then, both the NRA and the candidates it supported placed their ads through the media firm National Media or an affiliate; in some cases, the same employee placed ads for both the NRA and the candidates the NRA supported on the same day. This scheme appears designed to evade detection of violations of the laws governing independence between campaigns and outside groups and, in doing so, facilitated tens of millions of dollars in illegal, unreported contributions from the NRA to seven federal campaigns. 

In partnership with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, CLC filed four FEC complaints in 2018 that alleged illegal coordination between the NRA and seven federal campaigns via these vendors. Detailing the years-long activities of two overlapping webs of shell companies that designed and placed millions worth of ads for the NRA and the NRA’s endorsed campaigns, the complaints shine a light on an elaborate coordination scheme.  

The FEC regulates the use of common vendors for media placement because the targeting of political ads is a critical element of a campaign effort. If the NRA possessed inside knowledge of these campaigns’ strategies thanks to common vendors, it could strategically time and target its ads to complement the campaigns’ own efforts. That would make the expenditures anything but “independent.” The vendors may attempt to claim they established firewalls segregating work for the NRA and campaigns, but that argument falls apart when the same employees are placing ads for both groups.

The NRA using inside information about a candidate’s strategy to create ‘independent’ ads supporting him creates an unfair advantage, and it violates the law. According to the Supreme Court, groups like the NRA can only make unlimited expenditures if they are independent of the candidates they support, and it falls to the FEC to enforce the laws that preserve that independence and prevent corruption.

If the NRA’s ads are coordinated, then the law treats the spending on those ads as in-kind contributions to the candidate, which means those contributions should be reported—and capped—as such.  It is up to the FEC to enforce the law.

Starting on July 1, 2019, Nevada voting rights will be restored to people with felony convictions upon completion of any prison term. A new law passed in May 2019 will restore voting rights to more than 77,000 Nevadans. Previous Nevada law was one of the most complicated to navigate in the country. With this change, Nevada will join the growing number of states that are restoring the right to vote to people with convictions.

Prior to the law change, whether a person could vote depended on how many felony convictions they have, the category of the conviction(s), and in what year they completed their sentence. For some, their voting rights were restored once they completed their sentence. Others who were eligible to get their right to vote back after a conviction were required to petition the court to restore their rights – a process that many did not know about.

As a result, many Nevadans with past convictions who are eligible to vote simply do not know that they can participate. There are nearly 90,000 people in Nevada who have lost their voting right because of a conviction but over two-thirds of them are post-sentence, meaning they can apply to restore their voting rights. Yet only 281 people used the court petition process to restore their rights from 1990-2011 – an average of only 13 per year.

But a little bit of education and outreach will go a long way to assisting people to exercise their fundamental right to vote. In fall 2018, we sent Restore Your Vote organizers to Las Vegas and Reno to assist individuals with past convictions, train voter registration and re-entry organizations on the law, and support and build sustainable networks of assistance. The organizers helped hundreds of people start on the path to rights restoration and trained hundreds of community leaders and canvassers to be able to help others.

We continue to work with individuals and organizations in Nevada to smooth out the rights restoration process and make it accessible to everyone.

If you are trying to determine whether you can vote in Nevada, please access our online tool here.

In Arizona, whether a person can vote depends on how many felony convictions they have, whether they are able to pay their fines and fees, and whether they have completed their sentence(s). Moreover, some people (but not all) who are eligible to get their right to vote back after a conviction are required to file a request to restore their right – a process that many do not know about. As a result, many Arizonans with past convictions who are eligible to vote simply do not know that they can participate.

If you are trying to determine whether you can vote in Arizona, please access our online tool here.

But a little bit of education and outreach will go a long way to assisting people to exercise their fundamental right to vote. In fall 2018, we sent Restore Your Vote organizers to Phoenix and Tucson to assist individuals with past convictions, train voter registration and re-entry organizations on the law, and support and build sustainable networks of assistance. The organizers helped hundreds of people start on the path to rights restoration and trained hundreds of community leaders and canvassers to be able to help others.

We continue with individuals and organizations in Arizona to make sure that there are resources for voting rights restoration across the state and that people know how to access them. If you are looking for additional assistance to restore your vote, please feel free to reach out to us.

If you or your organization want to help people with felony convictions through the rights restoration process please feel free to reach out or use our Activist Manual and the included materials.

In 2017, Alabama passed a new law, for the first time in more than a century, that created a definitive list of which convictions will take away a person’s right to vote. The law could re-enfranchise tens of thousands who were denied the right to vote but do not have a disqualifying conviction. Yet the state of Alabama has refused to spend any resources informing these citizens that they can vote. Recent polling showed that nearly 72% of Alabamians with felony convictions who are not registered to vote still do not know that the law has changed, much less whether it has restored their voting rights.

In 2018, Campaign Legal Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center launched the Alabama Voting Rights Project (AVRP) employing three full-time Re-Enfranchisement Fellows across the state. We individually assisted over 2,600 Alabamians with past convictions and trained more than 2,900 community leaders and activists on the rights restoration process.

CLC is continuing to assist Alabamians through the voting rights process and provide support to organizations engaged in rights restoration. We can help push back against systemic barriers that keep Alabamians front voting.

To get in touch, contact [email protected].

If you are an Alabama resident who wants to understand your voting rights, click here to access our tool.

Learn more about our work for voting rights in Alabama: