The Congressional midterm election cycle is in full swing, as is the handwringing about the influence of “dark money” from tax-exempt “social welfare” organizations that are not required to identify their donors, and that spend hundreds of millions of dollars to impact the outcome of elections.
It is discomfiting to have hidden hands exercise such outsized influence on electoral politics when free and open elections are so crucial to the legitimacy of our government. Accordingly, and also because they are part of the larger partisan political dynamic in the United States today, there is considerable controversy about social welfare organizations’ engagement in electoral politics.
