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CLC submitted written comments to the state of Washington's Public Disclosure Commission regarding the adoption of two amendments to a campaign finance act that would protect elections from foreign interference.
CLC filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that the Democratic dark money group Big Tent Project Fund, which spent nearly $5 million in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary and appears to have a major purpose of influencing federal elections, violated the law by failing to register as a political committee and publicly disclose its donors.
CLC filed an amicus brief in the D.C. Circuit on October 29, 2019 urging it to set aside the district court decision in CREW v. FEC (New Models). The lower court found that the FEC’s post-deadlock dismissal of CREW’s enforcement complaint was not subject to judicial review because the two no-voting commissioners included a passing reference to “prosecutorial discretion” in their statement of reasons for the dismissal.
CLC and Issue One filed a brief in the United States Supreme Court, arguing that states are permitted to require presidential electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their home state, and showing that federal and state laws are not currently sufficient to ensure the transparency and legitimacy of the electoral college voting process if the electors are unbound.
On April 28, 2020 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Chiafalo v. Washington (linked with Colorado Department of State v. Baca), a constitutional challenge to the requirement that presidential electors – the people who physically cast their state’s electoral votes – must vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in their state.
CLC released a report that highlights recent examples of groups exploiting gaps in campaign finance law to keep voters in the dark about online political ads. Among other examples, it points to two dark money groups, Big Tent Project Fund and Fellow Americans, that reported millions in ad spending to the Federal Election Commission, but only a small fraction of that spending is appearing in large digital platforms' public archives. These examples provide a compelling case for Congress to adopt across-the-board digital disclosure legislation.