The consequences of our secret elections

[Commentary] It was six years ago this week that the US Supreme Court dramatically altered the American political landscape with its landmark ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC, essentially deciding that corporations and labor unions can spend millions of dollars getting candidates elected to federal office. As long as the funds didn’t go directly to the candidate, or were spent in coordination with the candidate, there would be no law broken. Corporate and union donations to the campaigns were still illegal. As a result of the ruling, super PACs were born, giant pools of money that act as shadow campaign committees, often run by people with close ties to the campaigns themselves. The organizers of these PACs must report all their donors and expenditures. They’re also — in theory, anyway — prohibited from “coordinating” with the candidate. But in politics, it seems, there’s always a way to dodge the rules and obfuscate what’s really happening.

This election, secrecy has been pushed to another level. Since the Citizens United decision came down, nonprofit groups have formed to back candidates. And unlike the super PACs, the nonprofits are not required to report who their donors are. That’s because these groups are theoretically focused on “social welfare,” not politics. It’s a highly cynical and dubious claim in many cases, but it’s working. The Internal Revenue Service is supposed to police whether these groups are actually concentrating on “social welfare,” but that’s not happening — not now, maybe not ever — because the IRS is paralyzed by budget cuts, missteps in its previous efforts to oversee these groups and related political controversies.