To protect democracy from dark-money influence, we need the Disclose Act

With free and fair elections under ongoing attack, the U.S. Senate must pass the long-stalled Disclose Act in the coming weeks — to shine a bright light on the secret, “dark money” that underlies our toxic political system. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he plans to bring this legislation to the Senate floor.

In less than six months, Americans will vote in the federal midterm elections. When they vote, they deserve to know which powerful special interests, corporations, billionaires or foreign entities are spending money to shape election outcomes. Secret political spending, including on political ads, weakens democracy and corrupts the process by which Congress enacts policies or confirms judicial nominees.

Dark money spending in federal elections continues to skyrocket. In the 2020 election cycle alone, organizations funded by undisclosed money spent a staggering $1 billion.

Dark money doesn’t only influence elections. Hidden special interests have spent tens of millions of dollars in recent U.S. Supreme Court confirmation battles, often through front groups. Some of these entities have even financed and promoted the election-related conspiracy theories and rallies that led to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

To make matters more dangerous, foreign investors — including Russian oligarchs and billionaires — have found loopholes to exploit the system, a problem that has taken on heightened urgency in light of Russia’s war in Ukraine. For example, foreign entities own appreciable shares of U.S.-based companies, including some of America’s best-known brands. Those corporations then spend enormous amounts of money to influence U.S. elections, ballot measures and judicial confirmations, providing a backdoor — yet currently, legal — way that antagonistic foreign interests could try to weaken American self-government.

In a recent high-profile case of illegal Russian money in American elections, a Russian oligarch allegedly secretly gave $1 million to Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, who had set up U.S.-based companies and also schemed to discredit Joe Biden and reelect Donald Trump in 2020. Fruman and Parnas solicited the oligarch’s funds to make illegal political donations to candidates around the United States while using a shell company to give a $325,000 donation to the main pro-Trump Super PAC. This example of illegal foreign election spending would not have been discovered but for the sleuthing of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. We must shine a bright light not only on these types of illegal foreign funds but also the foreign money that influences elections through legitimate investments in U.S. corporations.

Dark money political spending is a disastrous by-product of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United. In that case, the court’s conservative majority created the right for corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections, leading ultimately to an increase of mega-donations to super PACs and dark money nonprofits, such as the NRA.

Although the conservative justices who decided Citizens United opened the spigots of special-interest spending, they also supported requirements to make spending transparent. They wrote, “transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”

That’s where the Disclose Act comes in. Sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), this common-sense legislation starts with a basic requirement: Organizations engaged in electioneering must promptly disclose the identities of entities that donate at least $10,000 to the organization.

Importantly, the Disclose Act would prohibit U.S. companies from concealing election-related donations received from foreign entities and make it much harder for foreign interests to steer money to U.S.-based dark money organizations, especially through intermediaries. Simultaneously, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)  is leading House legislation to outright ban political spending by U.S. corporations that have an appreciable amount of foreign ownership, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sponsoring parallel Senate legislation. Indeed, the conservative majority in Citizens United signaled openness to this sort of regulation.

In light of the increasingly bitter and partisan fights over who sits on the Supreme Court, the Disclose Act would also require big-spending special interests to disclose the donors who underwrite advertisements to influence the confirmation of judicial nominees.

In 2021, the Disclose Act twice passed the House as part of comprehensive voting rights bills. In the Senate, this provision was recently supported by all 50 members of the Democratic caucus, and it garnered 59 votes in 2010, one vote shy of breaking a Republican filibuster.

Our electoral system is enduring a stress test like never before, with a former president who encouraged the Jan. 6 insurrection continuing to spread lies about widespread voter fraud. Powerful forces are fighting, often secretly, against the emergence of a democracy that protects the rights of minorities and long-marginalized communities. This harmful dynamic prevents Congress from fairly addressing the policies Americans care most about.

With the midterm elections fast approaching, Senate Republicans should join their Democratic colleagues and put an end to secret political spending by passing the long-overdue Disclose Act.

Michael Sozan is a senior fellow on the Democracy Policy at the Center for American Progress and was a chief of staff in the U.S. Senate.