How you (yes you) can fight dark money in elections | Judd Legum

Welcome back to How We Win, a Guardian opinion series with leading thinkers, offering bold ideas for America’s political future. Last week, Katie Phang argued that the Epstein files are a midterms sledgehammer. Today’s edition was written by Judd Legum, the founder and author of Popular Information. Sign up for future editions here.An unprecedented influx of cash from tech billionaires and corporate interests have been injected into the midterms to sway the election.With the fate of US democracy hanging in the balance, millions of Americans have faced a cacophony of provocative – and often inaccurate – messages precisely calibrated to shift their preferences. Right now, it is next to impossible for the average voter to sort through the noise.Overall, spending on federal elections in the United States has exploded in recent years – rising from $3.8bn in the 2014 midterm elections to $8.9bn in 2022. This year’s congressional midterms are on pace to break that record. A growing amount of this spending is so-called dark money, funds where the donor legally does not have to be disclosed.Last month, the Brennan Center estimated, conservatively, that $1.3bn in dark money had already been deployed in the 2026 midterms, more than twice the amount spent through election day during the 2022 midterms.Moreover, almost all Super Pac spending is functionally dark. Even when the donor is publicly disclosed, the money is routed through a vaguely named group, and few voters have the time or inclination to look up who funds it.Much of the dark and functionally dark money has come from Super Pacs funded by billionaires, including Elon Musk and Jeff Yass, and corporate interests, particularly the AI and crypto industries. In 2026, Super Pacs have flooded the airwaves, mailboxes and the internet with false and misleading advertisements. For example, the false claim (or implication) that Senate candidate James Talarico in Texas supported “taxpayer-funded sex change surgeries on kids”, Senate candidate Roy Cooper released a murderer from prison, or gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton is an alcoholic. (It was Vivek Ramaswamy’s own campaign that did the now infamous ad against Acton, featuring her estranged mother.)Although about 60% of dark money spent this cycle has benefited Republicans, and Republican-aligned groups are responsible for many of the most outrageous claims, it is a bipartisan problem. A Democratic Super Pac called WinSenate claimed “Jeffrey Epstein’s business partner funneled $3 million” to a Pac supporting the Republican Maine Susan Collins. The donor in question, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, was, along with Epstein, a member of the Core Club in New York City. But Schwarzman and Epstein weren’t business partners. PolitiFact rated the ad false. WinSenate receives much of its funding from billionaires, via another Super Pac, Senate Majority Pac.Without question, the billions of dollars in dark money will influence the composition of the next Congress, and Super Pac spending profoundly impacts a race, beyond possibly shifting votes. Campaigns are forced to respond, even when an attack has no factual basis. To counter pricey TV ads, candidates are diverted from voter events to fundraising functions. With a limited pool of money, parties and outside groups divert resources from other races. double quotation markWe don’t have to accept the world as it is. There are several ways we can combat dark money, as the balance of power shifts in Washington. We don’t have to accept the world as it is. There are several ways we can combat dark money, as the balance of power shifts in Washington. The first is to limit the amount of money billionaires and corporations can spend on elections. This has been tried, in fits and starts, since the 1970s. But efforts to restrict such spending have generally been invalidated by the courts. After Congress banned “soft money” – unlimited donations to political parties from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals – the cash was simply diverted to other entities, including Super Pacs.The second tactic would be to reduce the effectiveness of dark money. Multiple academic studies conducted over the last 15 years have found that attack ads from outside groups become meaningfully less effective after voters are provided with information about the donors behind the ads.In other words, requiring Super Pacs and other groups to disclose the top donors to their advertisements would blunt their impact. Right now, Elon Musk is spending tens of millions of dollars on misleading attack ads that are “Paid for by America Pac”. If those advertisements were required to disclose that virtually all of America Pac’s money comes from Musk, voters would view them much differently.Notably, the courts have upheld the constitutionality of increased disclosure requirements. In 2024, the United States court of appeals for the ninth circuit upheld Alaska’s requirement to include donor information on advertisements related to state campaigns. The supreme court declined to hear the case.Making donor disclosure requirements meaningful would require closing a few loopholes. Non-profit groups can currently accept anonymous donations and then spend the money directly to influence elections or donate the money to Super Pacs. In 2022, Arizona passed a ballot initiative requiring the disclosure of any donor who gives more than $5,000, directly or indirectly, for state campaign media spending. It passed with 72% of the vote. In September, a federal appeals court upheld the law as constitutional.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnother necessary reform would be to require significant contributions close to election day to be disclosed within 48 hours to prevent gaming the system with last-minute cash infusions.Politically, increased disclosure has bipartisan support. A poll conducted for the Brennan Center in April and May of 2026 found 85% of registered voters supported “mandatory disclosure for all federal campaign contributions and spending”. A proposal to close the non-profit loophole, require prompt disclosure of large donations, and list top donors on political communications would be extremely popular.Doing so, of course, would require action by politicians who, by definition, have benefited from the current dysfunctional system. An existing bill in Congress that would do some of this, the Sunlight on SuperPacs Act of 2026, has just seven co-sponsors – but is unlikely to pass absent significantly increased public pressure.In the meantime, I’ve created an app called Paid For By, which allows you to take a picture of any political ad on TV or in your mailbox and instantly learn the top five donors that helped pay for it.If our politicians, the beneficiaries of this deluge of dark money, won’t even take the modest step of donor disclosure, people will have to take action themselves.*** Want to hear more from our contributors?Follow them on Substack: Stacey Abrams, Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, Naomi Klein, Mehdi Hasan, Bernie Sanders, Rebecca Solnit, Katie Phang, Judd Legum, Wajahat Ali, Margaret Sullivan, and Charles Blow.