LANSING, Mich. (Legal Newsline) - A statewide initiative to adopt secure voting laws in Michigan, including a popular voter ID requirement, is up against millions from a leftist dark money fund that’s even gone so far as to pay prominent Republicans to help it defeat the initiative.
The Washington Free Beacon reports that the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a group linked to liberal billionaire George Soros, has contracted with a group of Republicans - one a sitting Republican senator’s son - to torpedo Secure MI Vote’s initiative.
Nearly $400,000 of the $2.5 million that that Sixteen Thirty Fund has poured into defeating the initiative was donated to Groundgame Political Solutions, which is associated with a group, Protect MI Vote, opposed to election reform. Groundgame contracted with paid petitioners not to secure signatures for the Secure MI Vote initiative.
The Free Beacon reports that Groundgame was first registered in Delaware by Andy Blunt, son of Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, who is not running for re-election this year. The firm operates in 10 other states by Andy Blunt with partners and fellow Republican operatives Gregg Hartley and Meghan Cox.
According to an attorney representing one of the petitioners who was paid not to circulate for Secure MI Vote, Groundgame violated state law by failing to report the payments.
“Section 43 of the Michigan Campaign Finance Act requires a ballot committee to report expenditures made by those working for it,” Troy Cumings, with the law firm of Warner Norcross & Judd, told Legal Newsline.
“Groundgame paid Dustin Wefel (Cumings’ client) and likely others to support its services to Protect MI Vote, including to refrain from obtaining signatures for the Secure MI Vote ballot committee. Yet neither Groundgame nor Protect MI Vote reported those payments. Section 43 of the Michigan Campaign Finance Act specifically prohibits a committee like Protect MI Vote from hiding its expenditures like this through a consultant.”
The Sixteen Thirty Fund prefers to operate in the dark as well. The Capital Research Center (CRC), a Washington D.C.-based group that investigates the political activities of non-profits, had to dig into Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service filings to trace the Fund’s money flow.
“The group hypocritically refuses to reveal its donors while demanding conservative nonprofits reveal theirs,” CRC’s Hayden Ludwig told Legal Newsline.
What CRC found, according to Ludwig, is that the Sixteen Thirty Fund is a “machine for laundering the names of major donors funneling millions of dollars into Democratic politics. It was even created with startup capital from ACORN, the Sierra Club, and Big Labor.”
Ludwig further said that the group has spent millions lobbying for passage of Democratic-sponsored legislation in Congress that would strip the states of their constitutional authority to set their own election practices. It has also backed D.C. statehood.
“Its most famous spin-off, Demand Justice, leads the Left’s courtpacking campaign,” Ludwig said. “And Sixteen Thirty gave millions to pro-Biden super PACs and funneled huge grants through its sibling, the North Fund, to Democratic Senate candidates and ballot initiatives in the 2019-20 cycle.”
Secure MI Vote needs 340,000 signatures by June 1 to get the election reform measures before the Michigan Legislature. After a simple majority vote there – a near certainty by the Republican-controlled body – the changes become law. Governor Gretchen Witmer, a Democrat, cannot veto the changes, as she earlier vetoed voter integrity measures sent to her by the legislature.
For an earlier story, spokesman for Secure MI Vote, Jamie Roe, told Legal Newsline they were shooting for 500,000 signatures but would likely fall into the 450,000 range.
Besides voter ID, the reforms would prohibit the Secretary of State from mass mailing absentee ballot applications, prohibit state and local election officials from accepting private funds to underwrite election management, and provide funding for the printing of ID cards, which would be free for those with no other valid ID.