Chris Pizzello/AP Photo
A voter completes his ballot at a polling place at the Michelle and Barack Obama Sports Complex on Election Day, Tuesday, November 5, 2024, in Los Angeles.
There are many reasons Democrats had a poor showing on Election Day. One reason that isn’t getting enough attention is that conservative foundations and wealthy donors spent heavily on funding nonprofits that suppress voter participation, kick people off the voter rolls, and throw out legitimately cast ballots.
In the 2024 election, more people didn’t vote than voted for any one candidate: 36.33 percent of eligible voters nationwide stayed home (or had their vote thrown out); 31.78 percent voted for Trump; 30.84 percent voted for Harris; and 1.06 percent voted for a third-party candidate.
There are, of course, many reasons why so many eligible voters didn’t vote. Right-wing funding of election deniers and anti–voting rights organizations are definitely part of the answer. Millions of people wanted to vote but were prevented from doing so. Others did vote, but their vote was wrongly rejected and was never counted.
That didn’t happen by accident; it was planned for and funded. In just three years—2020, 2021, and 2022—more than $1 billion flowed from more than 3,500 foundations and high-net-worth donors to about 150 nonprofits that advocate purging people from the voting rolls, restricting vote-by-mail or early voting, removing drop boxes, and other ways of making it harder for people to vote.
Using internet research and Form 990 keyword analysis, researchers at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy assembled a list of organizations that:
- promoted fabricated or overblown threats to election integrity such as noncitizen voting, voter fraud, and corrupt voter registration drives;
- were mentioned in Project 2025’s implementation plan;
- were linked to state preemption policies, which prevent duly passed municipal and county laws from being enforced; or
- were linked to policies criminalizing protest at the state or local level.
Based on this list of nonprofit names, we used Python and compilations of IRS Form 990 data published by Giving Tuesday to match filings by these anti-democracy organizations to filings by their institutional funders. (NCRP researchers used each anti-democracy organization’s Employer Identification Number to match them to public charity tax filings, and their organizational names were used to match them to private foundation funder filings. An Employer Identification Number is a unique identifier for entities that file tax returns, like a Social Security number for individuals.)
The donors we uncovered that are fueling this movement include not only well-known conservative private foundations like the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation, but also hundreds of lesser-known foundations. Public charities that sponsor donor-advised funds were also shown to have provided hundreds of millions of dollars to the nonprofits working to suppress the vote. Those entities included DonorsTrust, Fidelity Charitable, Goldman Sachs, National Philanthropic Trust, Schwab Charitable, and others. Because donors can make contributions anonymously through their donor-advised fund, it’s impossible to know which wealthy donors channeled their money through these entities.
Was voter suppression part of why Democrats lost? In a detailed investigation, journalist Greg Palast found that suppression resulted in millions of votes that were never cast or counted. Almost five million voters were wrongly purged from the voter rolls. More than two million mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors. More than one million provisional ballots were rejected and not counted. More than three million new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote. Hundreds of drop boxes were taken away in majority-Black cities. Palast’s analysis shows that the millions of votes that were never cast or counted were overwhelmingly from voters who would have likely voted for Democrats.
What kind of nonprofits are doing this work? Here are just two examples:
- Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) advocates for stricter vote-by-mail requirements and led a national campaign to purge voter rolls by sending threatening letters to state election officials. PILF is one of the more than 100 organizations active in Project 2025. The organization’s budget was $1.7 million in 2019 and more than doubled by 2023, to $3.7 million.
- The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is also a part of Project 2025. Its Election Protection Project encourages citizens to file complaints with the secretary of state, among other things. From 2020 to 2023, TPPF received $8.6 million in private charitable dollars. $1.4 million of that sum came from the Charles Koch Foundation.
In most cases, the donations to these groups came as unrestricted general operating support grants, which gave the charities the freedom they needed to adapt to an ever-changing policy landscape.
These right-wing donors got a fantastic return on their investment. Donors who think our society needs fewer obstacles to voting, however, have been outmaneuvered and outspent. To turn the tide and ensure people who want to vote can do so and can have their vote counted, democracy’s defenders must invest heavily and with unrestricted dollars in nonprofits that fight voter suppression, reach and engage low-propensity voters, and make real the promise of our democracy.
There are groups doing that very work at local, state, and federal levels. There are legal advocacy organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice, Advancement Project, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law that are fighting voter suppression in the courts. There are grassroots organizing groups like LUCHA (in Arizona), the Texas Organizing Project, the New Virginia Majority, and dozens of others that are registering low-propensity voters and fighting against state-level voter suppression efforts.
The list of groups that donors could support is long. We have the organizations and the leadership to fight back and win, but what we don’t have is enough resources. We can’t wait until the midterm elections to increase our funding to these groups. If we want to ensure that every eligible American who wants to vote can do so and will have their vote counted, the time to invest is now.
