National: Campaigns mine online data to target voters | Boston.com

Voters who click on President Barack Obama’s campaign website are likely to start seeing display ads promoting his re-election bid on their Facebook pages and other sites they visit. Voters searching Google for information about Mitt Romney may notice a 15-second ad promoting the Republican presidential hopeful the next time they watch a video online. The 2012 election could be decided by which campaign is best at exploiting voters’ Internet data. The Romney and Obama campaigns are spending heavily on television ads and other traditional tools to convey their messages. But strategists say the most important breakthrough this year is the campaigns’ use of online data to raise money, share information and persuade supporters to vote. The practice, known as “microtargeting,’’ has been a staple of product marketing. Now it’s facing the greatest test of its political impact in the race for the White House. “The story of this presidential campaign will be how both sides are using data and algorithms and personalization and math in their marketing,’’ said Adam Berke, president of the digital retargeting company AdRoll. “The promise and beauty of it is that it’s highly measurable — it’s easy to collect data and see what’s resonating and not resonating with voters.’’

National: $55 million for conservative campaigns — but where did it come from? | latimes.com

The financial firepower that fueled the rise of a network of conservative advocacy groups now pummeling Democrats with television ads can be traced, in part, to Box 72465 in the Boulder Hills post office, on a desert road on the northern outskirts of Phoenix. That’s the address for the Center to Protect Patient Rights, an organization with ties to Charles and David H. Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankroll a number of conservative organizations. During the 2010 midterm election, the center sent more than $55 million to 26 GOP-allied groups, tax filings show, funding opaque outfits such as American Future Fund, 60 Plus and Americans for Job Security that were behind a coordinated campaign against Democratic congressional candidates. The money from the center provided a sizable share of the war chest for those attacks, which included mailers in California, robo-calls in Florida and TV ads that inundated a pocket of northeastern Iowa. The organizations it financed poured at least $46 million into election-related communications in the 2010 cycle, among other expenditures.

National: New Voter ID Laws: How Students Are Affected | NextGen Journal

New voter ID laws being enacted in states across the nation could prevent many college students from voting in the next election. These laws, which have been passed in states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, among others, have the stated goal of preventing fraud by requiring voters to present photo ID when they go to the polls. But these laws may have unintended consequences, both for young people and the two presidential candidates. Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, a nationwide organization that mobilizes young voters, said that while these laws vary from state to state, they all make it harder for young people to register and vote. “We have a very busy year ahead of us, and a very important one,” she said in an April 21 Reuters article. “What a shame if we can’t continue to engage this generation in the political process, because these laws have made it harder.”

National: Campaign donations by text message: An FEC ruling on legality could come soon | The Washington Post

The Federal Election Commission on Thursday held a hearing on whether donations through text message should be legal. The commissioners held off on making a ruling during Thursday’s meeting, but a decision could come when the panel meets again next month. Both the Obama and Romney campaigns support legalizing text-message donations and on Thursday submitted statements in favor.

National: Spanish company’s control of online voting in US is a disturbing trend | South Lake Press

Former Russian dictator Stalin said, “It’s not who votes that count, it’s who counts the votes.” Maybe President Obama knew something Americans didn’t know. In January, Congress allowed the largest vote-processing corporation in America, the Tampa-based software company SOE, to be bought by the Spanish online voting company SCYTL. This is a major step towards global centralization of all election processes. SCYTL, whose funding comes from international venture capital such as Balderton, is run by Goldman Sachs veterans Tim Bunting and Mark Evans. Based in Barcelona, Spain, it is rumored the CEO Pere Valles is a socialist who donated heavily to the 2008 Obama campaign. Valles lived in Chicago while Obama was a senator. SCYTL runs elections in numerous countries, such as England, France, Canada, Norway, Switzer-land, India, Australia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. In 2010, it was involved in modernizing election systems for the mid-term elections in 14 American states.

National: Internet voting still faces hurdles in US | The Economic Times

Shop online. Bank online. Why not vote online? Pressure is building to make Internet voting widely available in the United States and elsewhere, even though technical experts say casting ballots online is far from secure. In the 2012 US elections, more than two dozen states will accept some form of electronic or faxed ballots, mostly from military or overseas voters, according to the Verified Voting Foundation. But there is a growing expectation that online voting will expand further. “The number one question I’m asked is when we will get to vote on the Internet,” Matt Masterson, Ohio’s deputy election administrator, told a Washington forum this month. “When you are doing everything else on the Internet and your comfort level is high, people expect to do that… You can adopt a child online, you can buy a house online without ever seeing it.” But computer security specialists say any system can be hacked or manipulated, and that unlike shopping and banking, the problem cannot be fixed by giving the customer a refund.

National: Americans Elect, promoting third-party candidates, faces internal rebellion | North County Times

Americans Elect – the innovative effort to jolt the political system with a third-party presidential candidate – is facing a democratic uprising of its own. A hastily organized contingent of Americans Elect activists is agitating to reverse the group’s decision last week to pull the plug on its nomination process after failing to generate sufficient interest in its candidates. Complaining that the group’s leadership hasn’t listened to the membership, the insurgents are pushing for Americans Elect to forge ahead. They don’t want the $35 million the group raised to get on the ballot in 29 states, including California, to go to waste. Involved in the effort is a Bay Area activist and filmmaker who ran for the Americans Elect nomination and came in third place, after former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer and former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. Michealene Risley, a resident of Woodside in San Mateo County, said she was shocked when she heard – via press release – that Americans Elect was shutting down the nomination process. “People feel really used and manipulated,” said Risley, who ran on a platform of campaign finance reform.

National: FEC releases election law documents after subpoena threat | Politico.com

Responding to the threat of a congressional subpoena, the Federal Election Commission this afternoon released reams of previously secret documents that detail how it enforces election law. It appears to end — for the moment — a months-long row between the House Administration Committee and election commissioners over how transparent the commission is and should be. The documents made public today include the commission’s enforcement and audit manuals and details of the procedures used by the FEC’s Reports Analysis Division.

National: Ex-offenders find a reason to reclaim the vote | The Washington Post

Should American citizens who have been convicted of crimes and served their time have their right to vote restored? The question is a political issue, part of a voting-rights debate that is being fought in the states and among political candidates. To ex-felons, it can be a personal challenge, as well: Will their votes matter, and why should they care? The rapper 2 Chainz, made the case for the vote at a pre-show stop at the Urban League of Central Carolinas in Charlotte on Saturday. He told his story for 40 young people, a few with criminal records. The 35-year-old Atlanta-based performer said he was first arrested at age 15 for cocaine possession. When it came to voting, he thought he was “counted out” and didn’t know he was eligible until he picked up a brochure at a registration drive at an Atlanta mall. Along with 10 friends, he recruited from his recording studio, “I walked around with a sticker the whole day” they voted. “I felt rejuvenated,” he said. “I felt like a citizen again.”

National: Federal bill would simplify absentee voting for troops | Army Times

One absentee ballot request from military and overseas voters would be good for an entire election cycle, under legislation introduced Friday in the House of Representatives. The bill, HR 5828, is aimed at clarifying confusion created in a 2009 overhaul of the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. The change can be interpreted as requiring separate absentee ballot requests for primary and general elections.

National: Churches tread lightly on politics in 2012 election | USAToday.com

With the 2012 election less than six months away, congregations are getting the message that Americans want religion out of politics. But that doesn’t mean they plan to keep mum in the public square. Instead, they’re revamping how congregations mobilize voters by focusing on a broader set of issues than in the past. Preachers are largely avoiding the political fray, and hot-button social issues are relegated to simmer in low-profile church study groups. Why? For one, Americans are growing impatient with religious politicking: 54% want houses of worship to keep out of politics (up from 52% in 2008 and 43% in 1996), according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Churches seem to be responding.

National: NIST: Internet voting not yet feasible | FierceGovernmentIT

Internet voting is not yet feasible, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology have concluded. “Malware on voters’ personal computers poses a serious threat that could compromise the secrecy or integrity of voters’ ballots,” said Belinda Collins, senior advisor for voting standards within NIST’s information technology laboratory, in an May 18 statement. “And, the United States currently lacks an infrastructure for secure electronic voter authentication,” she added. Collins released the statement in response to an inquiry from Common Cause, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit active in campaign finance and election reform.

National: Stephen Colbert spawns army of crazy super PACs | CNN

In late March, Stephen Colbert expanded his super PAC experiment, admonishing his late-night viewers to start organizations of their own on college campuses across America. They listened, and now the Federal Election Commission’s roster of approved super PACs is filled with groups registered to addresses in college towns. Danny Ben-David, a freshman at MIT, was one of the first to get in on the craze, after winning approval for his Why Not ZoidPAC? in March. “I was just sitting in my dorm room one night and said ‘oh hell, why not?’ It was almost frustratingly easy,” Ben-David said.

National: Ricketts’ Lesson In The Cost Of Politics | Buzzfield

The revelation last week that Joe Ricketts, the founder of TDAmeritrade, was considering spending $10 million on slashing personal attacks against President Barack Obama seemed the latest evidence of the flood of new money entering politics. Within hours of the New York Times’s scoop of a proposed ad, however, the lesson that emerged was a very different one: How dangerous and embarrassing it can be for corporate figures to play in partisan politics. Ricketts found himself frantically distancing himself from a proposal from adman Fred Davis while he scrambled to insulate his business interests — the brokerage he founded, a hyperlocal New York news group he owns, the Chicago Cubs — from potential fallout from livid liberal customers. It was the highest-profile of a handful of recent squalls revealing some of the natural, political limits to direct corporate influence in electoral politics. “I shall have no further comment on this or any other election year political issue,” a chastened Ricketts said in a statement Thursday.

National: Secret Political Donors Find Ways To Stay Anonymous | NPR

The latest deadline for the presidential candidates and the major superPACs to disclose their finances was Sunday night. The public and the media can find out who has been giving to the candidates, and how that money was spent. But there’s a lot of political spending that isn’t being reported. Outside money groups are spending millions of dollars, and the donors remain anonymous. Two recent court rulings could force those groups to file public disclosures, but there already seems to be a way around that. Unlike superPACs, these big-spending groups don’t disclose their donors. They operate mostly as tax-exempt advocacy organizations under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code. It’s a status that lets them hide the sources of their money.

National: 22 states join campaign finance fight | Associated Press

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia are backing Montana in its fight to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision from being used to strike down state laws restricting corporate campaign spending. The states led by New York are asking the high court to preserve Montana’s state-level regulations on corporate political expenditures, according to a copy of a brief written by New York’s attorney general’s office and obtained by The Associated Press. The brief will be publicly released Monday. The Supreme Court is being asked to reverse a state court’s decision to uphold the Montana law. Virginia-based American Tradition Partnership is asking the nation’s high court to rule without a hearing because the group says the state law conflicts directly with the Citizens United decision that removed the federal ban on corporate campaign spending. The Supreme Court has blocked the Montana law until it can look at the case.

National: Outside Spending Turns From Presidential Race to Congressional Contests | NYTimes.com

Millions of dollars in outside money began pouring into Congressional contests around the country in April, while spending by presidential “super PACs” dropped off, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday and other data. Outside groups, including super PACs and advocacy organizations, have spent at least $7 million on House races and $12.4 million on Senate races since the beginning of April, the first wave in what is expected to be a flood of independent spending this year in the battle for control of Congress. Some groups, like the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks for America, which push for lower taxes and reduced government spending, spent heavily in primary races between incumbent Republicans and challengers in Utah and Indiana.

National: Political advocacy piques shareholders’ interest | chicagotribune.com

In this presidential election year, shareholders are increasingly curious about the political agendas of public companies. Investors filed more than 100 resolutions this year asking companies to disclose what they spend on political advocacy, according to Institutional Shareholder Services, a proxy advisory service. The number of proposals for the first time exceeded shareholder resolutions on energy and environmental issues, which have long attracted significant interest from investors. Shareholders want to know about direct donations to candidates as well as harder-to-track contributions to trade associations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other tax-exempt groups that support certain candidates or political parties. Their targets include influential Illinois companies Boeing Co., Allstate Corp. and Caterpillar Inc. All three companies came out against the proposals.

National: Supreme Court faces pressure to reconsider Citizens United ruling | The Washington Post

Has anything changed in the world of campaign finance that might give pause to the five members of the Supreme Court who decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission exactly 28 months ago Monday? Or, to be more precise, has anything changed in the mind of at least one of them? The court faces that question in a flurry of contradictory arguments prompted by a decision by the Montana Supreme Court late last year. In upholding a 100-year-old state law, the Montana justices seemed to be openly defying Citizens United’s holding that the First Amendment grants corporations, and by extension labor unions, the right to spend unlimited amounts of their treasuries to support or oppose candidates.

National: Conservative groups outspending liberal counterparts 4 to 1 on congressional races | The Washington Post

Conservative interest groups have dumped well over $20 million into congressional races so far this year, outspending their liberal opponents 4 to 1 and setting off a growing panic among Democrats struggling to regain the House and hold on to their slim majority in the Senate. The surge suggests that big-spending super PACs and nonprofit groups, which have become dominant players in the presidential race, will also play a pivotal role in House and Senate contests that will determine the balance of power in Washington in 2013. The money could be particularly crucial in races below the national radar that can be easily influenced by infusions of outside spending. One example came this week in Nebraska, where a dark-horse Republican Senate candidate upset two better-funded rivals in the GOP primary thanks in part to a last-minute, $250,000 ad buy by a billionaire-backed super PAC. And in Indiana this month, veteran Sen. Richard G. Lugar was ousted in the GOP primary by challenger Richard Mourdock with the help of millions of dollars in spending by conservative groups. The Club for Growth, which backed a losing candidate in Nebraska, spent more than $2 million to help Mourdock in Indiana.

National: Court upholds key provision of Voting Rights Act; Supreme Court review likely | The Washington Post

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a signature portion of the Voting Rights Act, setting the stage for consideration by a Supreme Court whose majority is skeptical about the law’s continued viability. On a 2 to 1 vote, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit turned down a challenge to Section 5 of the historic civil rights act, which requires states and localities with a history of discrimination to get federal approval of any changes in their voting laws. First passed in 1965, the act was most recently extended in 2006. Conservative critics have said that despite lopsided votes in both houses and the approval of President George W. Bush, lawmakers did not do enough to justify extending the Section 5 restrictions on nine states, mostly in the South, and parts of seven others. But U.S. Circuit Judge David S. Tatel said the judicial branch had no reason to second-guess Congress in reauthorizing the law.

National: Appeals court upholds key voting rights provision | Associated Press

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, rejecting an Alabama county’s challenge to the landmark civil rights law. The provision requires state, county and local governments with a history of discrimination to obtain advance approval from the Justice Department, or from a federal court in Washington, for any changes to election procedures. It now applies to all or parts of 16 states. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that Congress developed extensive evidence of continuing racial discrimination just six years ago and reached a reasonable conclusion when it reauthorized section 5 of the law at that time. The appellate ruling could clear the way for the case to be appealed to the Supreme Court where Chief Justice John Roberts suggested in a 2009 opinion that the court’s conservative majority might be receptive to a challenge to section 5.

National: Can Montana brief end Citizens United? | Politico.com

Montana’s attorney general is due to file a brief Friday in the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to uphold the state’s Corrupt Practices Act. This 1906 law prohibits corporations from making expenditures on behalf of candidates in Montana elections. The Supreme Court’s response could have repercussions far beyond Montana — the case may well determine how much states can regulate money in politics after Citizens United. The state high court cited Montana’s long history of corruption, when corporations often spent unlimited sums to steal elections, as the reason to narrow Citizens United and uphold the law. The Supreme Court should heed the Montana attorney general’s argument. More important, this case could offer the high court a viable means to revisit its Citizens United decision. This 2010 ruling, extended by lower federal courts, has spawned the super PACs now threatening to bring Wild West corruption to federal elections.

National: Campaign finance law before 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals | necn.com

A government lawyer on Friday urged an appeals court to reverse a judge’s ruling that a century-old ban on corporate campaign contributions in federal elections is unconstitutional. Justice Department attorney Michael R. Dreeben told a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the prohibition serves the legitimate government interest of curbing corruption, and overturning it would run afoul of U.S. Supreme Court precedent. But attorneys for two northern Virginia executives who were charged with violating the ban argued that U.S. District Judge James Cacheris got it right when he ruled last year that the ban violates corporations’ free-speech rights. In his first-of-its-kind ruling, Cacheris said it was not logical for an individual to be able to donate up to $2,500 to a federal government while a corporation “cannot donate a cent.” The appeals court typically takes several weeks to rule.

National: House Democrats push to make voting easier | TheHill.com

House Democratic leaders on Thursday introduced legislation to streamline Americans’ trips to the polls. The bill is a response to a slew of recent state legislation – some proposed, some already law – setting stricter standards for voters to register or cast a ballot. Supporters of those state efforts — including new picture ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements – say they’re necessary to weed out ineligible voters and maintain the integrity of elections. But critics contend they’re designed to suppress eligible voters, particularly minorities and low-income Americans who tend to vote Democratic.

National: Congressional Democrats Push Voter Empowerment Act | Roll Call News

House Democrats on Thursday unveiled new voting rights legislation designed to modernize voter registration while cracking down on practices that could discourage certain populations from voting. The Voter Empowerment Act appears to be a direct counter to a growing movement within the GOP at the state and national level to require voters to present a photo ID when voting. “The ability to vote should be easy, accessible and simple. Yet there are practices and laws in place that make it harder to vote today than it was even one year ago. … We should be moving toward a more inclusive democracy, not one that locks people out,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), one of the bill’s sponsors and a 1960s civil rights icon.

National: Americans Elect Ends Online Primary After No Candidates Qualify To Run | ABC News

Americans Elect, the group that aimed to nominate a third presidential candidate through an online primary, ended its nomination process today after no prospective candidates met their minimum requirements. To run in its online primary a candidate had to get 10,000 “clicks” of support (1,000 in at least 10 states). Buddy Roemer was the closest to reaching that goal, but he got less than 6,300 “supporters. As of this week, no candidate achieved the national support threshold required to enter the Americans Elect Online Convention in June,” the group said in a statement. “The primary process for the Americans Elect nomination has come to an end.”

National: Magnate Steps Into 2012 Fray on Wild Pitch – Joe Ricketts Rejects Plan to Finance Anti-Obama Ads | NYTimes.com

Joe Ricketts, an up-by-the-bootstraps billionaire whose varied holdings include a name-brand brokerage firm in Omaha, a baseball team in Chicago, herds of bison in Wyoming and a start-up news Web site in New York, wanted to be a player in the 2012 election. On Thursday he was, though not in the way he had intended. Word that Mr. Ricketts had considered bankrolling a $10 million advertising campaign linking President Obama to the incendiary race-infused statements of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., brought waves of denunciation from Mitt Romney, the Obama campaign and much of the rest of the political world. Highlighting the perils of mixing partisan politics and corporate citizenship, the reverberations also swept through the Ricketts family’s business empire.

National: John Edwards trial: What will verdict mean for campaign finance? | CSMonitor.com

In the end, it seems, the John Edwards trial became only a circus sideshow in America’s convulsive efforts to define the limits of campaign finance. The defense rested abruptly Wednesday without Mr. Edwards taking the stand, marking the end of a courtroom drama that had plenty of drama but little of what the prosecution had promised, analysts and observers say. Before the trial began, prosecuting attorney Lanny Breuer said the federal government won’t “permit candidates for high office to abuse their special ability to access the coffers of their political supporters to circumvent our election laws.” … To some, the prosecution has overreached in an attempt to net a big fish. Yet the broader context of the trial has also played no small part in stripping it of deeper meaning for the political world. Indeed, given the US Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United ruling in 2010,  a candidate in a similar situation today would likely be able move such money to its target in an alternate, and legal, way.

National: Court Supports Electioneering Ad Disclosures | Roll Call

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has won another victory in his legal battle to force the Federal Election Commission to write stricter disclosure rules for certain types of political ads. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected a request by two conservative groups that it stay a March federal district court ruling that sided with Van Hollen. Van Hollen sued the FEC last year, arguing that its disclosure regulations for “electioneering communications” were too narrow and contrary to the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. The appeals court ruling, which came late on Monday, raises the prospect that politically active trade associations and nonprofits will have to more fully report who funds the ads they run on the eve of an election.