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REPORT: CHARLES KOCH’S POLITICAL NETWORK RAISES FEARS OF VOTER FRAUD WHILE LEAVING A TRAIL OF ALLEGED ELECTION VIOLATIONS
(October 2020) EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Many right-wing politicians and think tanks funded by Charles Koch and his network of billionaires are giving voice to false claims about the possibility of widespread voter fraud and rigged elections due to expanded mail-in voting access by states seeking to minimize the spread of COVID-19. Meanwhile, Koch’s consolidated political arm, Americans for Prosperity, has announced that 2020 will be its biggest year ever in spending around the election and that it has expanded door-to-door outreach during this pandemic. However, there has been little coverage of the Koch network’s history of election violations or its role in aiding voter suppression to help aid politicians that advance his political agenda. These examples should be included in any coverage of Koch-funded electoral activities during this election and during efforts by civic groups to ensure that Americans’ votes are counted. Here are snapshots of some of the key parts of that history, with more detailed in this backgrounder:
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Vote-By-Mail Restriction Efforts [2020].
Koch-funded think tanks are currently churning out pieces lamenting the supposed opportunities for voter fraud catalyzed by increased accessibility of mail-in ballots. They fail to mention the Koch network’s past of widely distributing false information about mail-in ballots. Meanwhile, Koch-funded politicians are working to produce legislation that would restrict access to mail-in voting and fighting efforts to limit the potential surge in COVID-19 cases due to crowded physical polling stations in November.
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AFP Mailers [2010-2014].
Americans for Prosperity (AFP), one of the groups established by Charles and David Koch, was involved in voter caging and misinformation campaigns across multiple states from 2010-2014. In 2010, the Wisconsin branch of AFP was identified as part of “a coordinated plot ... targeting minority voters and college students in a possibly illegal ‘voter caging’ effort for voter suppression.” In 2011, AFP was accused of attempting to
suppress Democratic voter turnout in Wisconsin’s recall elections after AFP sent flyers to Democratic voters encouraging them to vote by mail, but giving false information about the
deadline to submit ballots and giving a false return address; the address was actually the PO
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box for the right wing group Wisconsin Family Action. Similar mailers relating to voter registration deadlines were sent out by AFP in North Carolina in 2014, which provided the wrong deadline for voter registration, the wrong state agency through which to register, and the wrong ZIP code for returning registration forms.
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FEC Fines [2010/2016].
In 2013, another Koch front group, the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR), was found to have secretly channeled $11 million through Americans for
Responsible Leadership, an Arizona-based group, in order to oppose a tax increase and to support a proposal that would restrict the political power of unions. Then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced the civil settlement which ordered CPPR and Americans
for Responsible Leadership to pay a fine of $500,000 each--the largest election fine in
California history . Similarly, in 2010, the FEC agreed to a $233,000 fine for three Koch
network-funded groups for illegally hiding the sources of their funding for political ads in California. The groups in question obtained the millions spent on 2010 advertisements from CPPR, the main cash distributor for the Koch brothers’ political operations.
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Triad Investigations [1996-1997]
In 1997, the U.S. Senate investigated Triad Management Services, a shell corporation which had spent more than three million dollars to
fund attack ads in 29 House and Senate Races. Most of the races took place in states where Koch Industries had refineries, offices, or pipelines, and Triad was especially active in Charles
Koch’s home state of Kansas. Koch money financed an obscure entity known as the Economic Education Trust, which in turn financed two separate shell groups which themselves were controlled by Triad Management Services to produce the ads. The Triad case exemplified the Koch’s recurring strategy of setting up “disposable front groups” through which to funnel money for political expenditure, ultimately using their shell corporations as tools to evade contribution limits and financial disclosure requirements.
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