Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer

The national outbreak of fear over voter fraud appeared a spontaneous grassroots movement, but beneath the surface there was a money trail that led back to the usual deep-pocketed right-wing donors. To target Sharp, for instance, the Ohio Voter Integrity Project had relied on software supplied by a national nonprofit, True the Vote, which itself was supported in different ways by the Bradley Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, and Americans for Prosperity. True the Vote described itself as a nonprofit organization, created “by citizens for citizens,” that aimed to protect “the rights of legitimate voters, regardless of their political party.” But its founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, a Houston Tea Party activist, was guided by Hans von Spakovsky, a Republican lawyer and fellow at the Heritage Foundation who had made a career of challenging liberal voting rights reforms. Heritage had an ugly history on the issue. The think tank’s founder, Paul Weyrich, had openly admitted, “I don’t want everybody to vote.” In 1980, he told supporters, “As a matter of fact our leverage in elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”