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New Jersey's​ dark money law delayed
The donors behind New Jersey's most politically influential groups will remain a mystery indefinitely after a federal judge hit the pause button on a law that would have outed such "dark money" actors.
Set to go into effect later this month, the law would have required social welfare nonprofits and other nonprofit political organizations to disclose donors that gave more than $10,000 as well as spending related to elections and other political activity that exceeded $3,000. Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed the measure into law in June, despite previously vetoing the bill and calling it unconstitutional.
Soon after the governor signed the bill, though, Americans for Prosperity — a libertarian group funded by the Koch family, who would be affected by these new disclosure requirements — sued the state, arguing the law violated the First Amendment and targeted certain groups over others.
Two other nonprofit political advocacy groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Illinois Opportunities Project, have also filed lawsuits against the state for similar reasons.
U.S. District Judge Brian Martinotti's decision to delay the law's enactment came as a result of Americans for Prosperity's lawsuit. He granted a preliminary injunction to halt the law's implementation until the lawsuit is resolved.
If allowed to stand, the law would require political nonprofits to start recording donor information on Oct. 15, with the intent to publish the first quarterly reports in January. But with the Martinotti's decision, these reports are on hold.
Supporters of the law had hoped it would shed light on dark money activity ahead of the off-year election this fall, when all 80 seats in the Legislature are on the ballot. In 2017, groups without donor disclosure requirements spent $41 million to influence the state's gubernatorial and legislative elections, according to estimates from New Jersey election officials.
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Ballot measures are good democracy — but only if you can understand them
Marginal improvements have been made to help voters understand the questions posed to them on the ballot this November, a new study concludes, but such ballot measures still favor the college-educated — who represent a minority of the U.S. population.
This year voters in eight states will decide the fate of a collective 36 such propositions. In a study released Thursday, Ballotpedia assessed how easy it is to comprehend what each proposal would accomplish, concluding that the difficulty level had decreased compared with the referendums decided in the last off-year election of 2017 — but not by much.
In fact, according to a pair of well-established tests, 21 of the 36 ballot measures cannot be understood by the 40 percent of the voting-age population who never attended college.
Two states asking Supreme Court for permission to regulate Electoral College conduct
Colorado has become the second state to ask the Supreme Court to decide if states may legally bind their presidential electors to vote for the candidate who carried their state.
The issue of so-called faithless electors is the latest aspect of an increasingly heated debate about the virtues and flaws of the Electoral College that has blossomed, especially among progressive democracy reform advocates, now that two of the past five presidential winners (Donald Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000) got to the Oval Office despite losing the national popular vote.