Investigating Power
I imagine the people who fund ALEC would have preferred the organization to stay quietly under the radar, but given its strategy of diffusing policies through state legislatures, this has proven impossible. An anti-ALEC “hit squad,” ALEC Exposed, tries to document ALEC’s every move.
Bradley Files, Democracy, SPN, Wisconsin
Earlier this year, the Center for Media and Democracy reported on a new rightwing legal center called American Juris Link that is “actively working to track and support right-wing legal challenges to upend COVID-19 health restrictions, fight workers’ rights to unionize, and coordinate legal strategies” The group was “incubated by the State Policy Network” — […]
The software from ALEC, a conservative legislative and policy organization, is billed as a tool to assist with constituent services but amounts to a voter contact platform that is worth thousands of dollars and linked to the Republican National Committee’s voter database, the complaint said.
The nonprofit allegedly gave Hall and Lilly, ALEC’s current Michigan public sector state chairs, a program known as “ALEC CARE,” which the organization bills as a constituent services program but is actually a platform meant to help Republicans win office, the complaint said.
“CMD has obtained conclusive evidence that ALEC has been providing sophisticated voter management and campaign software, run by partisan political operatives and linked to the Republican National Committee’s voter file, to its legislative members since at least 2016 in continuing violation of its 501(c)(3) status,” the July 20 IRS complaint stated. “By ALEC’s own admission, […]
The “ALEC CARE” software was valued by ALEC at $3,000 per legislator. The company that produced the software, say the complaint-filing organizations, is Republican data firm VoterGravity, which is run by conservative activist Ned Ryun, who is also the founder and president of American Majority, which trains far right Tea Party candidates and American Majority […]
But according to a new whistleblower complaint filed with the IRS by the progressive watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), ALEC’s activities extend beyond efforts like writing legislation. The complaint alleges that ALEC has been freely providing campaign software programs valued at $3,000 each to its members, who are almost exclusively Republicans. The […]
It’s clear that this isn’t happening by chance. Watchdog groups point to a well-organized and well-funded effort to make it harder for millions of Americans to cast their ballots. A recent letter, backed by more than 300 voting rights groups and their allies, asked corporations to stop funding the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council. In […]
Shortly before Tomé took her position last year, more than 70 civic, labor and religious groups wrote to UPS and approximately 30 other companies, asking them to drop ties with ALEC on account of the organization’s campaign against COVID-19 public health orders. Included in the list were Koch Industries, FedEx, UPS, Anheuser-Busch, State Farm, GlaxoSmithKline, […]
The Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal group, filed the complaint against the American Legislative Exchange Council, which hosts conferences and provides model legislation to state legislators. It alleges that the council provides its 2,000 members, most of them Republican lawmakers, with data from a campaign vendor linked to the Republican National Committee, and […]