We all need to do more to ensure that, when it comes to our elections, everyone participates and everyone's voice is heard. Only then can we create a democracy that’s more fully of, by and for the people.
Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in McCutcheon v. FEC to strike down overall, or aggregate, contribution limits to candidates and political committees. Arizona PIRG Education Fund research found that this ruling could bring $1 billion in additional campaign contributions from fewer than 2,800 elite donors through the 2020 election cycle.
It took just 32 billionaires and corporations giving Super PACs an average of $9.9 million apiece to match every single dollar given by small donors to Romney and Obama in the 2012 election cycle, according to Billion-Dollar Democracy, a new report by the Arizona PIRG Education Fund and Demos. Those small donations amounted to over $313 million from more than 3.7 million individuals.
Mystery donors poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2012 elections via nonprofits and shell corporations, despite widespread public support for disclosure and decades of legal precedent supporting the public’s right to know the sources of election-related spending. A new report from the U.S. PIRG Education Fund and the Center for Media and Democracy found that contributions from phony for-profit corporations accounted for nearly 17 percent of all business donations to Super PACs.
A new analysis of data through Election Day from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and other sources by the Arizona PIRG Education Fund and Demos documents that big outside spenders drowned out small contributions in 2012.
The Top 5 “dark money” spenders on presidential election ads have reported less than 1% of their spending to the FEC, which is all that is required by the agency’s insufficient standards, according to a new report analyzing the latest campaign filings. Today, public policy organizations Dēmos and the Arizona PIRG Education Fund released “Megaphones for Millionaires: Super PACs and Unlimited Outside Spending in the 2012 Elections,” which provides a detailed analysis of Federal Election Commission (FEC) data and secondary sources on outside spending and Super PAC fundraising for 2012 election cycle.
