By JIM ARKEDIS and LINDSAY MARK LEWIS
The grip of the super PAC on the Republican primary season has been
well-documented. They are wrecking balls operating outside the
candidates' direct control, fueled by massive influxes of cash from a
handful of wealthy patrons. The millions spent by the pro-Santorum
Red, White and Blue Fund and the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our
Future, have prolonged their respective candidates' rivalry with the
front-runner, Mitt Romney, whose own Restore Our Future has bludgeoned
the competition from Iowa to Florida to Michigan.
And that's just the start. In the general election, super PACs will
evolve into full-blown shadow campaigns. This transition is already
underway, with the super PACs supporting Republican candidates
beginning to take on voter persuasion operations — like sending direct
mail and making phone calls — that have traditionally been reserved
for a campaign operation or party committee.
The phenomenon won't be isolated on the right. President Obama
recently embraced the outside groups that he had rejected, saying that
he would not unilaterally disarm. The president has dispatched one of
his most trusted aides to run Priorities USA, the White House's super
PAC of choice.
There is one pointed difference in the behavior we can expect from the
two sides in the general election. Whereas liberal groups have
generally been interested in increasing voter turnout, conservatives
have tended to want to suppress it.
In the general election, right wing groups may try to use super PACs
to affect the vote in this fall's election. And if we fail to
recognize super PACs' enormous potential to suppress voting before it
happens — and don't regulate them appropriately — millions of
Americans could be disenfranchised on Nov. 6, 2012.
Who Votes?
A series about the complexities of voters and voting.
Super PACs are the perfect vehicle for voter suppression, thanks to
two crucial advantages they have over traditional campaigns. First,
they operate in a legal black hole of opaque disclosure requirements
that allows them to disguise their activities. Second, a candidate's
campaign is shielded from a super PACs' duplicitous actions by a legal
firewall that prevents coordination between the two entities. These
features afford a super PAC plausible deniability: they can suppress
the vote while claiming to have done something else, and the candidate
can easily disavow a super PAC's actions.
Check out Restore Our Future's filings with the Federal Election
Commission, and it's easy to see how vague terms could mask reality.
While a super PAC must fill out a form for every expenditure, each can
be classified as "voter communication," "media production," or "direct
mail."
The devil is in what those terms might be hiding. "Voter
communication" could actually be a robocall that targets African
Americans, reassuring them that Obama has the election in the bag. A
"direct mail" piece sent to senior citizens' homes might encourage
them to vote on Wednesday, Nov. 7, just 24 hours too late.
This isn't just something we dreamed up. For decades conservative
groups have proven that voter suppression is cheap and effective: It
cost just a few thousand dollars for Allen Raymond, a Republican
operative, to make harrassing calls, jamming New Hampshire Democratic
Party phone lines during the 2002 Congressional campaigns, for which
he spent three months in prison; in 2006, the Republican National
Committee paid for fliers in Virginia that told African Americans to
"skip this vote;" Paul Schurick, an aide to former Republican Maryland
Governor Robert Ehrlich was convicted of using robocalls that told
African Americans not to vote in 2010.
Should a super PAC get caught doing something like this, its legal
separation from a campaign means the crime could never drag down a
candidate or party. "Yes, I'm aware of the allegations against
Cornering Our Future," a candidate might explain, "but as you know, my
campaign cannot coordinate its activities with a super PAC, so I
consider the matter closed."
And the candidate would be legally correct.
These are also key differences in accountability. When a candidate or
national party runs an ad, sends mail or makes a phone call, those
responsible for the activity are relatively easy to find and
investigate. Even in that context, hundreds of irregularities take
place every election cycle.
More importantly, parties and candidates have reputations to protect,
and want to live on to fight another day. Not so for a super PAC.
Terminating one is easy: its officers file a notice with the F.E.C.,
which then certifies that it has ceased operation. The super PAC's
only requirement is to maintain copies of its records for three years.
That's why most super PACs will disappear on the morning after the
votes are counted. There is little incentive to observe election laws
if you can just close up shop.
The rise of the super PAC parallels a subtle but concerted effort by
conservative groups to suppress the vote, which are disguised as
efforts to defeat exceedingly rare voter fraud. A 2011 study by
N.Y.U.'s Brennan Center found that 14 Republican-dominated states have
approved new legislation requiring higher standards for voter
identification. The center estimates that five million people could
find it more difficult to vote this year.
There's a close connection between these efforts and super PAC
funders, too. In some 30 cases, state lawmakers received model "voter
fraud" legislation from a conservative networking group called the
American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC has received funding from
Koch Industries, which is run by the conservative siblings of the same
name who have reportedly pledged $60 million to defeat President Obama
this fall. Given donation restrictions to campaigns, much of that
money would have to go to super PACs.
Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press
At a news conference in Trenton in November 1993, New Jersey
Governor-elect Christie Whitman defended her campaign against
accusations of voter suppression.
An infamous case from the recent past serves as a cautionary tale. In
1993, Christine Todd Whitman defeated incumbent New Jersey Governor
Jim Florio to become the first female Republican governor in American
history. She squeaked through by one percent, overcoming a deficit of
some nine points in the final week of the campaign.
But in the days following the election, long-time Republican operative
and Whitman campaign manager Ed Rollins did something truly bizarre:
he started bragging about his secret weapon, suppressing the
(presumably Democratic) vote.
With just $500,000 in hand, Rollins — who worked for Michele Bachmann
in this year's Republican primary — was shockingly frank in a 1993
Times article about how he instructed grassroots organizers to
approach ministers at African American churches, then as now centers
of political gravity for black get-out-the-vote efforts. In return for
sizable contributions to a minister's favorite project, all church
leaders had to do was not mention the election from the pulpit.
New Jersey and other states have a long-standing practice of handing
out "walking around money," a few bucks to cover transportation and
lunch for campaign workers on election day. Rollins contacted a key
few Florio get-out-the-vote workers and offered to match it, provided
they just sit home and watch TV.
How many votes did Rollins suppress? We'll never truly know of course,
but Florio lost the election by just 26,000, a pittance in an election
in which almost 2.5 million votes were cast. That's 1.05 percent.
The Whitman campaign immediately went on the defensive, issuing
denials and trying to insulate the candidate from Rollins's
activities. Michael Chertoff, then the U.S. attorney for the district
of New Jersey and later George W. Bush's Secretary of Homeland
Security, launched an investigation into Whitman's campaign that
eventually cleared her, just days before her inauguration.
Chertoff did acknowledge that some money had been paid to Democrats,
but cast the issue as one of free speech, pointing out that members of
a political party shouldn't be required to support only its
candidates.
More telling is Chertoff's opinion of the spirit of Rollins'
wrongdoing. Chertoff cautioned aspiring political consultants who
"play tricks and cut corners" that "that's a very sad outcome, and if
they take that message to heart they will eventually get in trouble."
Operating under the opaque protection of a super PAC's plausible
deniability, today's political consultants probably won't get in
trouble, no matter what they do. As long as super PACs remain legal,
they should be governed, at a minimum, by strict disclosure rules that
allow the F.E.C. to follow the outflow from their accounts, not just
the inflow. The dangers of super PACs and voter suppression need to be
addressed today, not when its beneficiaries are running the
government.
Lindsay Mark Lewis is the Executive Director of the Progressive Policy
Institute; he was the finance director of the Democratic National
Committee from 2005 to 2006. Jim Arkedis is a Senior Fellow at P.P.I.
More:
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/suppress-the-vote/?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20120330
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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