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California Attorney General Xavier Becerra argues the state's disclosure requirement is necessary to prevent charitable fraud.
Supreme Court to hear case challenging California donor disclosure law
Jan 13 2021
California is widely regarded as the gold standard for campaign finance transparency, but one of the state's disclosure rules will soon face scrutiny from the Supreme Court.
The high court agreed last week to hear an appeal, brought by two conservative advocacy groups, that challenges California's law requiring nonprofits to disclose their top donors.
The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, founded by the influential Koch family, and the Thomas Moore Law Center, a conservative Catholic legal group, claim California's law infringes on their rights of free speech and association, but state officials say it is necessary to prevent charitable fraud.
<p>Since 2010 California has required nonprofits to provide, to the state attorney general, the names and addresses of major donors — similar to the federal tax forms charities must send to the IRS. This information is not publicly disclosed, and it "helps the state protect consumers from fraud and the misuse of their charitable contributions," said Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is defending the case for California.<br></p>
<p>But the two organizations making the appeal say the state has failed to keep certain donor records confidential. In 2014, they filed separate lawsuits on the matter, and federal courts ruled in their favor. But in 2018, their cases were combined in an appeal, and California's law was upheld as constitutional.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>"It is clear that the disclosure requirement serves an important governmental interest," Judge Raymond Fisher wrote in the ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.</p>
<p>Following this decision, the two groups appealed their consolidated case to the Supreme Court. Oral arguments have not yet been scheduled.</p>
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President-elect Biden has previously supported broad reform initiatives, like HR 1.
Reform groups renew unanswered call for support from Biden
Jan 04 2021
Democracy reform advocates, still hoping for a significant statement of support from Joe Biden, have asked the president-elect to kick off the new year by pledging to prioritize their agenda.
One week after the election, 170 good-government and voting rights groups called on Biden to back their proposals. They believe that tackling corruption and strengthening democracy are of the utmost importance following the still-contentious presidential election. But Biden has yet to elevate that agenda.
While Biden cannot take any official action until Jan. 20, the 117th Congress convened Monday and can begin legislating right away So these groups are also hoping Speaker Nancy Pelosi keeps her word and once again focuses the first House bill on broad election, anti-corruption and voting rights reforms, like she did two years ago with legislation known as HR 1.
<p>Fifty democracy reform groups sent a <a href="https://declarationforamericandemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/12-23DFADBidenletter-1.pdf" target="_blank">letter</a> to the incoming administration before the new year, asking Biden and Harris to back their agenda and use the bully pulpit to boost public support for reform efforts. Both Biden and Harris have previously supported HR 1 and other reform initiatives, but Biden less than other Democratic presidential contenders.<br></p>
<p>Four issues top the groups' agenda: safeguarding voting rights by ensuring every person can cast a ballot safely and securely; ending the corrupting power of big money in politics by increasing transparency around <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/dark-money" target="_self">dark money</a> and strengthening election oversight; restoring ethics and accountability in Washington by reducing the power of lobbyists and fortifying conflict-of-interest rules; and protecting the rule of law by restoring the Constitutional system of checks and balances.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>In November, Pelosi said in a <a href="https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-9df8-d665-a1ff-9ff8eb560000" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">letter</a> to Biden and Harris that reform proposals such as these would be her first priority in the House, and legislation would be introduced and passed on the first day of the new Congress.</p>
<p>In addition to supporting legislative proposals, the groups urge Biden to also use executive orders to encourage broader transparency around White House affairs and election spending. They also suggest Biden appoint someone on his staff to lead these democracy reform efforts.</p>
<p>"Too many Americans have lost faith that their elected officials can address our country's challenges," the groups wrote in the letter. "By supporting, championing and prioritizing bold reforms like HR 1 and implementing comprehensive ethics and transparency plans for your administration, we can restore ethics and accountability in government."</p>
<p><a href="http://thefulcrum.us/american-promise" target="_self">American Promise</a>, <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/common-cause" target="_self">Common Cause</a>, <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/end-citizens-united" target="_self">End Citizens United</a>/Let America Vote Action Fund, <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/maplight" target="_self">MapLight</a>, <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/representus" target="_self">RepresentUs</a> and 45 other civil society groups signed the letter.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p>
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President-elect Joe Biden, who with Jill Biden marked Veterans Day on Wednesday, has come under criticism for not making democracy reform a priority.
Anxious democracy reformers pressing Biden to make more of their causes
Nov 12 2020
Joe Biden has plenty of campaign promises to keep, beyond the obvious and enormous top priorities of corralling the coronavirus and stabilizing the economy. And that's made democracy reform groups, which have never counted him as an impassioned ally, newly skeptical their priorities will get addressed in his new administration.
Their anxiety has come to the surface this week. A coalition of 170 progressive good governance and voting rights organizations asked the president-elect to elevate a collection of fix-the-system proposals into his first 100 days' agenda. Separately, one of the most influential such groups, RepresentUs, lambasted the Biden transition for "an omission of epic proportions" by giving short shrift to the issues it cares about.
Their impatience, just days after Biden's victory became clear, underscores the precarious position the cause of fixing democracy's dysfunction has in the public policy agenda.
<p>At the same time, however, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has signaled she may revive the sweeping election process, government ethics and money-in politics legislation known as HR 1, and have the House pass it again in January even before Biden's inauguration. </p><p>Doing so "right off the bat," she told reporters before her Democratic majority was trimmed by about a dozen seats on Election Day, would "reduce the role of big, dark, special-interest money that prevents us from having policies that the American people need." </p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>That could only happen, though, if the Democrats win both runoffs in Georgia in January and take the narrowest possible control of the Senate. Otherwise, HR 1 and <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/biden-political-reform" target="_self">all the other legislation</a> on the good governance wish list — including a restoration of the <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/voting-rights-act" target="_self">Voting Rights Act</a> and a package to curb executive power abuses — would continue to get ignored to death by GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.</p><p>Biden has backed taxpayer funding of congressional and presidential campaigns — a Holy Grail for many reform groups — since he was a new Delaware senator in the 1970s. And early in his campaign for the Democratic nomination he unveiled a full slate of proposals for expanding voting rights, curbing money's sway over campaigns, bolstering government ethics and recalibrating the balance of power. </p><p>But, unlike seven of his rivals in the sprawling early field, in the summer of 2019 he <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/candidates-end-citizens-united-pledge" target="_self">declined to sign a pledge</a> to put those issues on top of his legislative agenda if elected. And, after he wrapped up the nomination, it appeared to take a concerted lobbying effort to get a robust section on democracy reform added to the party platform — just in time for a convention <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/joe-biden-agenda" target="_self">when almost all mentions </a>of the topic were about the need to assure easy voting in the pandemic-upended election.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Part of that effort was <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/democracy-reform-groups-to-biden-dont-you-forget-about-us" target="_self">a public appeal to Biden</a> from a new coalition dubbing itself the <a href="https://declarationforamericandemocracy.org/" target="_blank">Declaration for American Democracy</a>.</p><p>It was that group that went public Tuesday with a <a href="https://declarationforamericandemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/9.28-Day-One-is-for-Democracy-1.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">manifesto</a> calling on Biden to both push hard for HR 1, whether Congress stays divided or not, but also make 30 different moves by executive order to promote voting rights and assure his administration is more honest, transparent, responsive and respectful of checks and balances than in the past.</p><p>The most important moves on the coalition's list, it said, would be requiring federal social services agencies to help the people they serve register to vote; tightening the ethics pledge for political appointees; curbing the revolving door between the executive branch and lobbyist and corporate offices; refusing to have anything to do with fundraising by so-called <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/super-pac" target="_self">super PACS</a>; posting White House visitor logs; and making public all the work of the White House office of legal counsel.</p><p>For the organizations in the group, any of these changes would represent a dramatic shift from the past four years. President Trump, who won partly on a vow to "drain the swamp," has done nothing of the kind while upending virtually avery norm of democracy he could get his hands on.</p><p>Most recently, and potentially most consequentially, has been his decision to contest his defeat last week and in the meantime refuse to cooperate in the transition. But along the way he has challenged the precepts of open and ethical government by commingling his business interests with government work, choosing secrecy over transparency at nearly every turn and thwarting all congressional efforts to oversee or investigate his activities. </p><p>But there is no time to wait, said Josh Silver, who runs the influential reform group RepresentUs. And the signals from the Biden transition team that such issues have fallen to the second tier demonstrate "an omission of epic proportions."</p><p>It "follows a pattern of Democratic presidential candidates talking big about these issues on the campaign trail and promptly ignoring them when the chips are down. That's why our nation is in the perilous position we're in now," he said in an exceptionally harsh statement Monday. "It just requires leadership that prioritizes these reforms. Based on President-elect Biden's Day 1 agenda, it's not going to happen, and he is guaranteeing more dysfunction, more authoritarianism and more instability." </p><p>Biden will likely focus first on proposals that could attract bipartisan support — starting with providing economic relief during the resurgent pandemic and then moving on to improving the nation's crumbling infrastructure and using the climate change crisis as the basis for job creation.</p><p>The political dynamic on Capitol Hill means Biden may have to pull back from some policy proposals that are mainly goals of the left and have little or no traction among conservatives. Democracy reform, in the main, falls in that bucket</p>
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Poll workers Angela and Zach Achten check in a box of absentee ballots in Sun Prairie, Wis.
Stay alert until every vote is counted: A U.S. election observer's message
Nov 04 2020
Asquino was the U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 2012 to 2015, the conclusion of nearly four decades as a foreign service officer.
<p>As a career diplomat who proudly represented the United States abroad in Latin America, Europe, Central Asia and Africa, I saw firsthand how elections were stolen in repressive countries. In the days ahead, we need to make sure that every vote is counted to avoid this result at home. </p><p>Time and again, votes in many of the authoritarian places where I served were rigged to allow corrupt leaders to remain in power indefinitely. As an international election observer, I often saw violations including ballot manipulation, proxy voting and voter intimidation at polling sites. </p>
<p>But the most blatant cases of electoral rigging often happened during the vote count itself — or after transmission of tallies to government-controlled electoral commissions.</p><p>To cite just one example, when I was posted to Romania in the early 1990s, I served as an international observer from the U.S. embassy for a parliamentary election there. After the last polling place where I'd observed was closed, I was allowed to remain to watch the paper ballots being counted by poll workers. Opposition and ruling party representatives were also there and permitted to challenge any ballot that appeared to be unclearly marked. As I understood Romanian, I could follow everything being said, although as an observer, I was not allowed to intercede in any way. Generally, consensus was reached among those present on whether such ballots should be counted or declared void. </p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>I was impressed by what seemed like a fair process and agreement by all sides on the final tallies. Opposition candidates did very well at this polling place, and the results were posted outside on a bulletin board for the public to see. All the ballots, along with the tally sheets signed by the poll workers and party representatives, were placed in a container. It was then secured with a wax seal and transported to the electoral commission. Everything seemed above board.</p>
<p>But days passed before the commission, controlled by the ruling party, announced the winners. And when it did, the tallies showed landslide victories for almost all of the ruling party's candidates. </p><p>The opposition parties challenged the results, arguing there had been strong support for their candidates at sites like mine throughout the country. They charged that the election had been rigged, and international observers concurred. But the government said there had been "grave errors" in polling site tallies requiring the commission to re-examine the ballots and count them again. </p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>There was no transparency in how this alleged recount was conducted. Nevertheless, the government declared the "revised" tallies were correct, and the results final. </p>
<p>In those years, Romania's judicial system was largely controlled by the ruling party, so the opposition had no recourse to challenging the outcome in court. It was my first experience with a party in power stealing an election. Unfortunately, I would witness similar rigging elsewhere during the decades that followed. </p><p>What relevance, if any, does this experience have for this American presidential election? Normally, I would say none whatsoever. But now, I'm not so sure. </p><p>Due to the coronavirus pandemic, record numbers of Americans voted by mail — 64 million envelopes had been returned by the morning of Election Day. After receiving their absentee ballots, many returned them to an official drop box rather than use the Postal Service. In four states, elections with entirely-by-mail voting have been held for years without any evidence of measurable cheating.</p><p>But President Trump, as has become universally known, has challenged the legitimacy of such voting by mail. Without any proof, he has claimed many times that this practice will lead to massive electoral fraud and has already made illegitimate the results that poured in Tuesday night. His solution, he signaled up until the eve of the election, will be to contest results that don't go his way all the way to the Supreme Court, which is now dominated by conservatives, including three justices he appointed. </p><p>There is simply no reason to believe that voting by mail has undermined a free and fair election in our country. But because so many more of us voted this way than ever before — and because the envelopes must be opened, the signatures checked and the ballots readied for tabulating all by hand, but in some swing states not before Election Day — the process of counting all the votes that have been cast with total legitimacy will take longer than many are used to.</p><p>As voters, we need to stay watchful in the coming days. It is crucial that the final vote count be complete, accurate and fair.</p><p>Contrary to what the president has claimed, there is nothing in our Constitution or laws that says presidential winners must be declared on election night. We should remain both patient and vigilant in the days ahead to ensure all our voices are heard — and remain alert in the 11 weeks until Inauguration Day to help ensure the legitimate result prevails. </p><div></div><p>State and federal officials must also stay vigilant to prevent foreign governments and any others from interfering with the final vote count. As patriotic citizens, it's our duty, and <a href="https://holdthelineguide.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">we all have a role to play</a> to defend American democracy if we want to make sure we avoid the sort of electoral rigging I saw so often overseas. </p>
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