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freedom to vote act
The 2024 Election Was Smothered in Dark Money—How Do We Turn on the Lights?
A new Brennan Center study found that dark money groups spent almost $2 billion on the 2024 election, roughly double the total spent in 2020.
May 08, 2025
Every day brings a new story about the outsized role of private wealth in American politics. Elon Musk slashing and burning his way through federal agencies. Billionaire campaign donors like Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon running cabinet departments. Other Trump patrons reportedly shaping policy on everything from crypto to the Middle East. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, a small group of major donors is organizing to fund the party’s 2026 push to retake Congress.
And these are only the donors we know about.
The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision ushered in the era of “dark money”—ballooning campaign spending by groups that do not disclose their funding sources. On Wednesday, the Brennan Center published a study by the journalist Anna Massoglia. She found that dark money groups spent almost $2 billion on the 2024 election, roughly double the total spent in 2020. And that’s the money Massoglia could identify—the real total is almost certainly higher, perhaps substantially so.
Voters are deeply unhappy about the role of money in politics, but years of inaction to address this issue have also left them understandably cynical.
The term “dark money” as we use it refers to election spending by groups that are not legally required to—and do not—disclose their donors. Most of this spending would have been illegal before Citizens United, which eviscerated many long-standing limits on campaign money and led to the creation of super PACs, political organizations that can raise and spend unlimited money on campaigns.
The justices got many things wrong in Citizens United. One of them was their assurance that all the new campaign spending they had just allowed would be transparent, allowing Americans to be fully informed about who was trying to influence their votes.
The justices seem not to have realized, however, that many of the new groups they were now permitting to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns were not subject to any disclosure rules. There have since been numerous efforts to fix this oversight and require all major campaign donors to be made public—most recently as part of the Freedom to Vote Act, which came within two votes of overcoming a Senate filibuster in 2022—but none of those bills have made it through Congress.
Meanwhile, dark money in federal elections has continued to rise—and become even harder to trace. In the years immediately after Citizens United, groups that didn’t reveal their donors tended to purchase their own campaign ads, which were at least reported to the Federal Election Commission if they ran in the weeks before the election and were therefore fairly easy to track. Even if the source of the money was opaque, we could see the spending itself.
Now, as our new analysis shows, reported campaign ads account for just a tiny fraction of dark money spending. Most of it now goes directly into the coffers of super PACs, and some of it pays for online ads and early-cycle TV and radio ads not subject to any legally required disclosure. We are able to track down some of that money due to voluntary disclosures and research using services that monitor TV advertising, but our overall tally of dark money spent in 2024 is an undercount, possibly by a large margin.
Both Republicans and Democrats benefited from significant dark money support in 2024, but the majority of traceable dark money backed Democrats. Most of those funds went toward enormous spending in the presidential race—$1 out of every $6 in dark money that we can track was funneled to Future Forward, the super PAC backing Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris. Trump’s dark money support that we know about was not as high, although it still amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars (including more than $35 million that paid for apparent “false flag” ads in swing states designed to look like they came from Harris).
Ultimately, neither party will have any incentive to curb reliance on secret spending absent a change in the law. To congressional Democrats’ credit, they included a fix in the Freedom to Vote Act. It was among the most popular provisions in the bill, enjoying broad public support among voters from both parties.
Voters are deeply unhappy about the role of money in politics, but years of inaction to address this issue have also left them understandably cynical. Regaining Americans’ trust must include concrete steps to make it easier for them to hold political leaders accountable. Providing the transparency that even Citizens United promised 15 years ago would be a good place to start.
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The GOP Has Already Cheated in the 2024 House Race
A Brennan Center analysis found that gerrymandering in 2024 will give Republicans approximately 16 additional seats in the House of Representatives compared to fairly drawn maps.
Oct 03, 2024
Gerrymandering is as old as the republic. In the very first congressional election, Patrick Henry drew a map to try to keep James Madison from being elected to Congress. (That was before the word “gerrymandering” was even coined.) Today, both parties do it with gusto when they can.
And now gerrymandering may decide control of the House of Representatives.
Once, gerrymandering was an art. Phillip Burton, the legendary Democratic House member from San Francisco who served from the 1960s to the 1980s, used to draw the state’s maps on a tablecloth at a Sacramento restaurant. He proudly called one misshapen district “my contribution to modern art.” Now, however, it’s a science. Digital technology has reshaped the drawing of maps. Partisans can craft districts to quash competition in a way that lasts throughout a decade.
Gerrymandering may be as old as the republic, but so is the fight for fair maps.
Once, there was hope the courts would step in. In 2019, however, the Supreme Court ruled that federal judges were barred from policing partisan gerrymandering. And while it is still illegal to draw district lines to discriminate based on race, judges have often winked and allowed politicians to racially gerrymander so long as they shrug and say, “It’s not about race, it’s just politics.”
Rampant district rigging has blocked fair representation in many states, especially in the South. Nearly all the population growth in the United States over the past decade took place in the South and Southwest, and most of that came from communities of color—the very voters who should be represented and who are being shut out of power.
Now, we know that there are direct partisan consequences too. All the map drawing, all the lawsuits, are done for 2024. The dust has settled. And the Brennan Center’s experts have analyzed the effects of gerrymandering. Attorney Michael Li and political scientist Peter Miller have checked and rechecked the data.
Here’s what they found: Gerrymandering in 2024 will give Republicans approximately 16 additional seats in the House of Representatives compared to fairly drawn maps. That is well more than the margin of control in this Congress or in the one before it. There can be no question that this was done deliberately and with scientific precision—and comes especially at the expense of communities of color. In most of the gerrymandered states, there were hundreds or thousands of fair maps that could have been drawn.
What can be done about it?
One answer comes from Ohio. Seven times, the state supreme court there struck down unfair maps drawn by the Republicans. (The Brennan Center represented a broad coalition of Ohio voters.) Each time, partisan map drawers simply ignored the court. Then the state’s esteemed Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a prominent Republican, retired due to term limits. Now she leads a statewide drive for a ballot measure to create a strong, independent, citizen-led redistricting commission. This conservative stalwart teamed up with the progressive grassroots Ohio Organizing Collaborative. It’s a buddy movie for the ages.
Republicans tried to change the number of votes needed to pass a measure like this, but citizens rejected that sneaky move. Then state officials rewrote the language to say that the initiative was designed to support gerrymandering. No matter. Polls look strong, and there is a good chance that in Ohio, voters will untilt the legislature and congressional maps. Ohio would join Arizona, California, Colorado, and Michigan with their independent commissions. It is a prime exhibit of why voters should be able to overrule politicians.
There’s a national solution too. The Freedom to Vote Act would ban partisan gerrymandering in congressional redistricting. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would strengthen that vital law against racially discriminatory rules. Both bills came achingly close to passing in the last Congress.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), at a Brennan Center event with Democracy SENTRY in Chicago this summer, announced that Democrats would make these voting rights bills the first order of business—and that they would change the filibuster rules so they could pass. The next night, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged to sign them (the only bills mentioned by name in her convention speech).
Gerrymandering may be as old as the republic, but so is the fight for fair maps. At the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, James Madison insisted on the provision used to give Congress the power to override local politicians. It used “words of great latitude,” he explained, because “it was impossible to foresee all the abuses” that might come. “Whenever the State Legislatures had a favorite measure to carry, they would take care so to mould their regulations as to favor the candidates they wished to succeed.”
Meanwhile, voters will go to the polls to choose their representatives—but too often, the representatives will choose the voters. And the Congress that would consider reform will be one disfigured by biased rules and manipulative maps.
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2024 Trifecta Imperative to Win Key Democracy Reforms
We must repair and revitalize the rules of our democracy in order to reflect our democratic values, to ensure the opportunity for every eligible citizen to vote, and to protect against political money corruption of our democracy.
Sep 06, 2024
On January 5, 2021, two Democrats won Senate runoff elections in Georgia. This flipped the Senate and resulted in an unexpected “trifecta”—Democratic control of the White House, the House, and the Senate.
Could a trifecta happen again in 2025?
The odds currently are against it, primarily because of the Senate races.
But if Democrats win the presidency, a trifecta is possible and, if that happens, historic democracy reforms that nearly passed in the last Congress would be on the doorstep for quick passage in 2025.
Whether the Democrats obtain a trifecta in November is in the hands of the voters, and possibly the courts if Trump refuses to accept the election results as he did in 2020.
The presidential race is currently close, with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris inching ahead of former President Donald Trump in recent polls.
A Harris victory could provide down-ballot support, especially in key House races, including races in California and New York. Democrats need to pick up just four seats to flip the House.
Holding the Democrats’ two-vote majority in the Senate, which includes four Independents who caucus with them, is much more difficult—but not impossible.
Of the 34 Senate seats up for election in November, 23 are currently held by 19 Democrats and the four Independents, and just 11 by Republicans.
Senate Democrats and Independents currently hold a 51-49 edge over Republicans.
It’s widely expected that Democrats will lose the seat currently held by retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.). To maintain control of the Senate, Democrats would need to hold all of their remaining seats that are up this year, along with a Harris win to preserve the vice president’s tie-breaking vote.
Democrats and Independents running for reelection generally are polling ahead of their challengers, except for Sen. John Tester in Montana, who currently trails Republican businessman Tim Sheehy.
There are two crosscurrents at work in the Senate races, which include a handful of Democratic incumbents running in red and purple states.
On the one hand, ticket-splitting for President and Congress has become increasingly rare, and there are Democratic Senators seeking reelection in Ohio and Montana, states where Trump is expected to win easily.
On the other hand, incumbents typically enjoy an edge. In 2022, all 29 Senate incumbents won reelection. In 2020, 84% of Senate incumbents won.
The Democratic trifecta in 2021 resulted in Congress coming close to passing historic democracy reforms dealing with voting rights, money in politics, partisan gerrymandering, and other core reform issues.
If Democrats beat the odds and obtain a trifecta in November, Congress is expected to move quickly to pass the democracy reform measures.
In 2021, after the House passed early versions of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, Senate Democrats failed by just two votes to pass an exception to the filibuster rule that would have allowed the democracy reform legislation to pass the Senate with a simple majority and go to President Joe Biden for his signature.
Ironically, the two Democrats who voted against the filibuster rule exception, Sens. Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, voted just weeks earlier for an exception to the filibuster rule in order to pass an increase in the debt ceiling. And both senators were supporters of the democracy reform legislation.
But for these two Senators opposing the filibuster exception, historic democracy reforms would be protecting our democracy and our elections today.
Both Manchin and Sinema are retiring this year.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently said, “One of the first things I want to do, should we have the presidency and keep the majority, is change the [filibuster] rules and enact both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Act.” Schumer said the Democrats will have the votes needed to “change the rules,” should Democrats keep control of the Senate.
“This is vital to democracy,” Schumer said, “This is not just another extraneous issue. This is the wellspring of it all.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) also has indicated that the two democracy reform bills would be an early House priority if Democrats flip the House. Indicating its top priority status, Jeffries assigned H.R. 11 to the Freedom to Vote Act in this Congress, the lowest number he, as House Minority Leader, could give to a bill.
Vice President Harris is a longtime supporter of these core democracy measures. At last month’s Democratic convention, Harris said in her acceptance speech: “[T]he freedom that unlocks all the others [is] the freedom to vote. With this election, we finally have the opportunity to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.”
For decades, there has been bipartisan leadership and support for numerous democracy reforms. They include the Watergate reforms of the 1970s; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its regular reauthorizations and amendments in 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006; and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.
Since the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision in 2010, however, congressional Republicans have almost unanimously opposed democracy reforms, leaving Democrats to support them alone.
Polls have shown these democracy reforms have strong public support among both Democrats and Republicans.
The Freedom to Vote Act would be the most comprehensive pro-democracy law enacted in decades. It would:
>> Reverse voter suppression laws that have flooded red states since the 2020 presidential election, using as justification Trump’s continuing false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
- Increase access to the ballot, including early voting requirements in all states for federal elections.
- Require each state to provide for no-excuse vote by mail.
- Provide for accessible voting by individuals with disabilities.
- Provide for automatic voter registration.
- Establish nonpartisan standards to prevent extreme partisan gerrymandering.
- End secret “dark money” contributions from being spent in federal elections.
- Establish a voluntary system of matching small donations with public funds, but not taxpayer funds, for House races.
- Strengthen enforcement of federal campaign finance laws.
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would strengthen the legal protections against discriminatory voting policies and practices by restoring the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and repairing the damage done by recent Supreme Court decisions. It would:
- Revitalize the Voting Right Act’s preclearance provisions, after the Supreme Court gutted these rules, to require preclearance for new voting laws in certain states and localities to ensure they are not discriminatory.
- Provide a new way for determining which states and localities are covered by the preclearance provisions.
- Repair Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, also gutted by the Supreme Court, to allow voters to sue to block voting rules that are discriminatory or will create discriminatory results.
- Provide an expedited means for covered states to “bail out” of coverage to be released from the preclearance requirement if they have not engaged in discriminatory behavior for a specified period of time.
Whether the Democrats obtain a trifecta in November is in the hands of the voters, and possibly the courts if Trump refuses to accept the election results as he did in 2020.
But one thing is clear—we must repair and revitalize the rules of our democracy in order to reflect our democratic values, to ensure the opportunity for every eligible citizen to vote, and to protect against political money corruption of our democracy.
This begins with the enactment of the two historic democracy reform bills, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
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