By Paul Abowd
The Center for Public Integrity

Voters haven’t had a clue who is behind American Tradition Partnership — the Colorado group pushing to rewrite Montana’s campaign finance laws — and that’s just the way the secretive nonprofit wants it.

A 2010 fundraising pitch to its donors promised that “no politician, no bureaucrat, and no radical environmentalist will ever know you helped,” and “the only thing we plan on reporting is our success to contributors like you.”

“Montana has very strict limits on contributions to candidates,” reads the document, obtained by The Center for Public Integrity. “but there is no limit to how much you give to this program.”

As for the state’s ban on corporate money in elections?

“Corporate contributions are completely legal,” the pitch assures potential funders. “This is one of the rare programs you will find where that’s the case.”

“You can get some traction with that pitch,” says Dennis Unsworth, who led the state’s investigation of the group in 2010 that unearthed the document. “If you can offer to influence the elections outside the law, that’s a great calling card.”

For three election cycles, ATP has plastered the state with mailers attacking "radical environmental groups" and moderate Republicans.

While ATP’s funders are still mostly a mystery, the Center for Public Integrity has identified what records indicate is the secretive organization’s founding donor — an anti-union owner of Colorado’s largest furniture chain — and discovered a long list of affiliations with national tea party groups funded by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers.

This election, ATP has vowed to keep Attorney General Steve Bullock out of the governor’s mansion. In October, voters received a brazen multi-page newspaper-style flier placing the Democratic candidate in a photo lineup with three registered sex offenders.

But the group hit the national spotlight thanks to three landmark court battles with Bullock and the state of Montana.

The U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision invalidated a federal ban on corporate spending similar to what 24 states had on their books, but Montana held fast to its law. ATP sued to overturn it, losing to Bullock in the state’s high court. But in June, the nonprofit prevailed on appeal to the nation’s highest court.

ATP is pushing past its Citizens United challenge with two more suits to eliminate Montana’s low contribution limits and disclosure rules, setting up a potential challenge to contribution limits nationwide.

Tea party ties
One of ATP’s founders is former Montana Congressman Ron Marlenee, who served from 1977 until the state dropped from two House seats to one in 1992. Marlenee used his D.C. Rolodex to raise money for the fledgling pro-energy group, which registered in Colorado in 2008.

Marlenee rallied a tea party crowd in Bozeman in 2010, appearing on stage with a half-burned American flag, which he said he wrestled away from a “liberal Marxist” protester.

ATP has joined tea party lobbying efforts, signing at least two letters to Congress in the last year urging an end to tax credits for renewable resource industries. The letters were signed by Koch-funded groups including Americans for Prosperity and tea party boosters FreedomWorks, Club for Growth and Art Pope’s John Locke Foundation.

In its 2008 application for tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization, ATP listed its “primary donor” as Jacob Jabs, Colorado’s largest furniture retailer and a donor to Republican candidates and causes. Jabs pledged a $300,000 contribution to get ATP on its feet, according to IRS records obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

Jabs, through a spokesman, on Monday said he did not make a donation and has "never heard of" ATP or the group's previous incarnation.

"He did not commit to the funds indicated by Athena Dalton in the filing so clearly he did not give them funds," wrote Charlie Shaulis, director of communications for American Furniture Warehouse, Jabs' company, in an email to I-News Network in Colorado.

Dalton wrote a letter to the IRS asking the agency to speed up the process for awarding it nonprofit status. The letter states that the approval was needed quickly, otherwise Jabs would not make a contribution. The agency gave it the thumbs up four days later.

The amount of the gift would be double Jabs’ total federal campaign contributions since 1997, which have gone exclusively to Republican candidates and party organizations, according to FEC records. 

Jabs also poured money into a failed “right to work” ballot initiative in Colorado, becoming a television spokesman for the 2008 anti-union effort.

ATP shares resources and a D.C. mailing address with an affiliated 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit called the American Tradition Institute, which works in tandem with a network of Koch-funded think tanks  to oppose wind energy and dispute the reality of climate change. It has launched lawsuits against state mandates for renewable energy usage and targeted climate scientists in academia.

The libertarian Koch brothers, Charles and David, have become better known in recent years with the rise of the tea party. They are principal owners of Koch Industries Inc., the second-largest privately owned company in the U.S., with major investments in the energy industry. 

ATI has accepted donations from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a free-market think tank underwritten by Exxon Mobil and Koch foundation money, according to a report by the Institute for Southern Studies.

Its director of litigation Chris Horner is also a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank that has taken a half-million dollars from Koch foundations since 1998, according to the report.

‘We won’t be shut up, or shut down’
In 2008, American Tradition Partnership flooded the state with mailers attacking ten state legislators, but reported only $12,000 in spending for the entire election.

An investigation by the state’s Commission on Political Practices concluded that the group had broken state law requiring outside spending groups to register as political action committees and disclose all donors and spending.

Commissioner Unsworth concluded in October 2010 that ATP had registered a “sham organization” called the Coalition for Energy and Environment and vastly under-reported its activity. The PAC’s reported spending, said the state, would have barely covered the cost of postage for the raft of glossy, full-color mailers ATP sent out.

ATP filed forms with the IRS the same year, reporting more than $600,000 in spending.

ATP maintains that its spending on mailers, most targeting moderate Republicans running for state legislative seats, is “educational” and therefore falls outside the state’s definition of “express advocacy” that would require it to disclose its funders and its spending on the mailers.

ATP did not face penalties and did not disband. Instead, it changed its name from Western Tradition Partnership and sued to strike down Montana’s disclosure laws.

The case is set for trial in March 2013.

“We won’t be shut up or shut down,” ATP said in a press release in June.

ATP’s years-long court battles have pushed the group into the public spotlight, threatening the secrecy of its donors. The group has vigorously resisted discovery proceedings in court, missing several deadlines to produce evidence requested by the state.

Lawyers in Bullock’s office filed a motion to compel ATP to present evidence, including bank records, or drop their lawsuit. It has not complied. According to a court filing, ATP’s lawyer Jim Brown emailed the state’s lawyers in late August, explaining, “I have a difficult client."

Nonetheless, the state has won access to bank records for the organization. If a judge makes them public, they could offer voters a glimpse at the group’s funders.

‘I was the screen’
The group rarely communicates with the press and it hires unknowing lawyers to sign campaign finance reports and its 2008 nonprofit incorporation documents in Colorado.

Scott Shires has been sued and fined for his election activities, but the Colorado political consultant says his reputation really took a hit after he signed ATP’s forms. When Montana released the results of its 2010 investigation, Shires’ name began showing up in the press, and he says he cut ties to the organization.

“The operatives writing these stupid ads and mailings don’t want to be identified,” said Shires. “I was the screen that allowed them to hide — plausible deniability is something a lot of these groups are interested in.”

Shires listed himself as “President” of ATP when he signed the group’s request for exempt status with the IRS in 2008.

He is widely known for registering hundreds of political committees in Colorado, mostly Republican groups. The work involves some risk. He pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns for a client in 2008, a misdemeanor charge. He was also caught up in a scandal that linked former U.S. Rep. and 2008 Senate candidate Bob Schaffer with the beneficiary of a questionable congressional earmark.

As of May 2012, an IRS filing still listed Shires as the group’s president, and he remains one of the few names publicly associated with the group.

ATP Executive Director Donald Ferguson did not return numerous calls for comment.

‘Not really sure who is in charge’
The left-leaning Montana Conservation Voters claims ATP was unfazed by the 2010 investigation and is “right back to doing the same thing,” according to the group’s board member Ben Graybill, who filed the original complaint.

This year, ATP has registered a PAC in the state. It sent mailers prior to the June primary election, but has reported zero spending to the state.

Its filings are signed by Montana attorney Chris Gallus, who was “surprised” to receive a call from the Center regarding ATP. He claims no leadership role in the organization, and said he’s “not really sure who is in charge.”

Gallus said he has not been contacted by ATP since being hired to sign their PAC reports, and does not anticipate filing any spending reports on their behalf. “Until that changes, my involvement is the same as the date I signed their forms.”

The organization sent out a questionnaire to candidates in early October, asking about their stance on land development and environmental regulations in resource-rich Montana.

“Will you oppose legislation which would categorically limit development of any specific energy resource?” reads one. “Will you oppose legislation that would rescind, reduce or shorten the tax holiday on oil & gas wells?” reads another.

Candidates who don’t respond, or don’t respond with answers favorable to ATP’s interests, are often targeted by a direct mail campaign similar to those launched at Bullock.

Its adversary, the Montana conservation group, endorses candidates for the state legislature who align with its mission to “protect clean water, public health, and our incredible outdoor heritage.” Its mid-October mailers praise Bullock for leading “the fight against corporate control of our elections.”

Unlike ATP, the group reports its direct and independent spending to the state and lists its donors.

“They’re scofflaws,” said Theresa Keaveny, executive director of the Montana conservation group.

Keaveny says ATP is not only in violation of Montana law, but also IRS rules for 501c(4) groups, which dictate ATP must not spend a majority of its funds on political activity.

According to its 2008 application for exempt status, obtained by the Center, ATP promised not to “spend any money attempting to influence” elections. It also promised not to “directly or indirectly participate or intervene on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate for public office.”

It would, however spend “70 percent” of its time and resources to “educate citizens” about “land and resource development issues.”

Jabs did not return a request to comment for this story.

Governor’s race a toss up

Bullock, a Democrat, is running against Republican Rick Hill. It’s expected to be a close race despite Montana’s majority-Republican voting population.

“We want citizens deciding elections, not corporations,” said Bullock in an October debate during which he touted his record as a campaign finance crusader.

While outside spending groups, including the Republican and Democratic governors associations, have swarmed the state with ads, the two candidates have had to abide by Montana’s low contribution limits — for most of the campaign.

In October, ATP made national news when a federal judge agreed with the organization and its high-profile campaign finance lawyer, James Bopp, and struck down contribution limits on individuals, PACs, and parties — including the $630 cap on individual giving to Bullock and Hill.

"The political establishment can no longer tell citizens to shut up because they've reached their speech limit," said ATP Montana Director Doug Lair in a press release.

Montana joined the ranks of 12 other states with no limits on contributions to candidates, but only temporarily. A week later, a federal appeals court stayed the lower court decision pending a full appeal, putting the state’s contribution limits back in force.

Bullock’s opponent took advantage of the six-day free-for-all between the ruling and the stay, accepting a $500,000 contribution from the state’s Republican Party. The gift dwarfed Montana’s $22,600 limit on party giving to candidates.

‘Who’s saying these crazy things’
A month before the vote, Montana residents woke up to a fake newspaper on their doorstep called “The Montana Statesman.”

The publication calls itself “the largest and most trusted news source” but is actually a series of ATP-funded attacks on Bullock. It leads with a giant headline that reads “Bullock Admits Failure.”

The “news” story claims that the attorney general has let “1 in 4 sex offenders go unregistered.” It includes four photos: three registered sex offenders and Bullock.

The group can continue to raise money on the promise that “no politician, no bureaucrat, and no radical environmentalist will ever know you helped make this program possible,” as its 2010 briefing to donors reads. “You can just sit back on election night and see what a difference you’ve made.”

Unsworth says his 2010 investigation did not stop ATP, and outside spending that has already flooded the state, is sure to intensify, particularly in light of the Citizens United decision. He calls the advertising a “mess of trash that lays at the feet of the public,” paid for by “funny money with no legal constraints.”

“We don’t know who’s saying these crazy things,” he added, “so the public has to suffer and our political system suffers as a result.”

The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit independent investigative news outlet. For more of its stories on this topic go to http://www.publicintegrity.org/politics/consider-source.

Update (Oct . 22, 7:00 p.m. ET): This story was updated to reflect that Jabs, through a spokesman, denied making a contribution to ATP.

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As Republican Mitt Romney works to unify the party faithful behind him, the number of lobbyists raising money to help him secure the White House has soared.

More than five-dozen lobbyist-bundlers have raised at least $14 million for Romney’s election efforts, according to reports submitted Monday. That includes 42 who raised nearly $9 million during the third quarter of 2012.

The third quarter marked the first period of pro-Romney fundraising activity for two-dozen lobbyists, according a review of Federal Election Commission documents by the Center for Public Integrity.

Among them, former Republican Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York, who raised $238,200; John Castellani, president and CEO of pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA, who raised $61,000; Brian P. Miller of oil and gas giant BP America, who raised $36,550; and Joseph Seidel of Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest bank.

Two lobbyists each collected more than $1 million for the election efforts of the former Massachusetts governor from July through September, records show. Bill Graves, the president and CEO of the American Trucking Association, and attorney David Beightol of D.C.-based firm Dutko Grayling both raised about $1.1 million.

To date, Graves has now raised more than $1.6 million — more than any of the other 62 lobbyists whose names have been disclosed in federal filings.

Romney, unlike President Barack Obama, has not voluntarily released a list of bundlers — elite political fundraisers who turn to relatives, friends and business associates to raise large sums and then deliver the funds in a “bundle” to the candidate. They are often given perks and special access — both on the campaign trail and once politicians are elected.

But thanks to a 2007 law passed in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal, all federal candidates are required to report information about the lobbyists who bundle money for their campaigns.

Obama, who, as president, has taken a tough stance against lobbyists in his rhetoric and policies, has not taken money from lobbyist-bundlers, according to records. He has voluntarily disclosed the names of everyone who has raised at least $50,000 for his re-election efforts.

According to his campaign’s most recent disclosure in July, nearly 650 bundlers had collected more than $143 million for Obama and the Democratic National Committee. The president is expected to release an updated list with his third-quarter bundlers later this week.

All of the GOP presidential nominee’s lobbyist-fundraising muscle has aided not only the Romney campaign but also the “Romney Victory Committee” — a joint fundraising organization that funnels cash to his campaign, the Republican National Committee and several other party entities.

Individuals can donate up to $75,800 to the Romney Victory Fund. The first $5,000 is directed to the Romney campaign while the next $30,800 goes to the RNC. The remaining funds are split between other participating party committees.

Romney has rejected calls from good-government groups such as the Center for Responsive Politics, the Sunlight Foundation, the League of Women Voters and the Campaign Legal Center to release additional information about his top fundraisers, unlike former GOP presidential candidates George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Romney’s fundraising network extends well beyond those lobbyists named in FEC filings. Earlier this year, USA Today released a list of more than 1,000 individuals that the newspaper identified as bundlers for Romney.

Even as Romney has denied requests for increased transparency, he plans to list the names of all bundlers who raise at least $200,000 in a commemorative book after Election Day. Top supporters are also being offered special access to weekly strategy sessions, VIP retreats and signature apparel, according to Politico.

Those who raise at least $200,000 between the primary and general election will be honored at the “Stars” level, according to documents obtained by Politico, while those who bundle at least $400,000 enjoy “Stripes” level status.

Some of Romney’s lobbyist-bundlers have blown past these thresholds.

In addition to Graves and Beightol, Dirk Van Dongen, the president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, and Patrick J. Durkin, Sr., of Barclays have each bundled more than $1 million. Van Dongen has raised roughly $1.2 million, including nearly $961,000 during the third quarter, and Durkin has collected about $1.1 million.

Sixteen other lobbyists have raised at least $200,000 for Romney, according to the Center analysis.

Abramoff, once a top Washington lobbyist, pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges in 2006 and served 43 months before being released in late 2010. The scandal prompted Congress to pass a package of new ethics rules.

The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit, independent investigative news outlet. See more of its stories on this topic.

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Investigative News Network
The focus on billionaires’ and corporations’ contributions to Super PACs this year has highlighted the impact of the rich and powerful on the presidential campaigns.

But an analysis by the Investigative News Network of contributions by wealthy individuals in seven states shows that their giving is greater than any one cause or race reveals -- with millions flowing into state, federal and even local campaigns, parties and committees far and wide.

Take Colorado software entrepreneur and gay rights activist Tim Gill. He has given $450,000 to Colorado independent expenditure committees so far this political cycle, which began in 2011. He’s also given generously out of state—$100,000 to the Ohio Democratic Party Executive Committee and $25,000 to the Iowa Democratic Party—and smaller amounts to 26 candidates and causes in that time, from President Barack Obama to Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, to candidates running for the Colorado state house.

All told, Gill, who did not respond to a request for comment, has doled out nearly $3.7 million to state and federal causes and campaigns in the past five years, making him the largest political donor from Colorado who wasn’t funding his own campaign.

Gill is no exception.

Wealthy Iowans put most of their money into causes at home, but they have also donated to candidates, parties and causes in New Jersey and Washington state this election cycle. Likewise, donors from Missouri have given to political parties and campaigns in Tennessee and Indiana. Money from Vermont has flowed into Wisconsin, from Colorado into Pennsylvania, from Massachusetts to Washington State and from California into Georgia. Donors in all seven states examined for this report gave to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s successful campaign to beat a recall election this summer.

The findings illustrate what Michael J. Malbin, director of the Campaign Finance Institute in Washington, DC has been seeing in his own research.

“Politics is becoming increasingly national,” said Malbin, the author of several books and a professor at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany, SUNY in New York. “Means of communication, fundraising and also campaigning are becoming national -- and it’s affecting state and even local races.” 

This is different from the century-plus-old participation by national corporations and labor unions in state politics, he said.

“There are a much broader variety of actors, often ideologically motivated, who are involved now. And they can bring resources to bear that can overwhelm local resources,” he said. “It does create questions about representation that could be troubling.”

There is no single government database that captures all of the contributions by any prolific donor. They are recorded in piles of reports to federal and state elections officials by the campaigns and causes that have received the money.

To get this rare, comprehensive look at the top donors in seven states, the Center for Responsive Politics, which collects and analyzes contributions on the federal level, and the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which gathers and studies contributions in state races, merged their data on the top donors. The organizations, both members of INN, looked at donations to and from California, Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Vermont. The data do not include so-called “dark money” contributions to 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofits, which are exempt from campaign disclosure requirements. 

Supplemented with reporting by INN-member newsrooms across the country, the analysis showed that looking at state and federal donations together gives a more complete picture of the most generous political contributors in each state--and where their money is going. In some cases, to look at only one would grossly misrepresent who the top donors even are.

The list of top donors to state campaigns and causes in Massachusetts and Vermont would be different from the list of top donors in those states to federal candidates, parties and causes – which is where they sent most of their political contributions.

In Colorado, Iowa and Missouri, the situation is reversed. The biggest contributors donated the largest sums to state candidates and issues.

Of California’s top 10 donors in 2011 and so far in 2012, four contributors gave overwhelmingly to state causes and campaigns while the other six have given most heavily on the federal level. Only by merging both sets of records does the full picture of the state’s most active political contributors emerge.

San Francisco hedge fund manager Thomas Steyer, for instance, gave nearly $22 million this year to support a ballot initiative he’s spearheading that would force corporations with operations out of state to pay more California taxes. Another top California donor, DreamWorks founder and CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg has given relatively little to California campaigns and causes this cycle--around $10,000—but has donated $2 million to the top Super PAC supporting Obama, Priorities USA Action.

Some wealthy individuals give so broadly that it’s only by looking at contributions across state and federal campaigns that the full breadth of their political reach is revealed.

Retired ING Insurance Executive Fred Hubbell has donated just shy of $114,300 in this election cycle -- divided about evenly between state and federal causes and campaigns. He gave much of it in $1,000-or-smaller contributions to individual Democratic candidates in his home state of Iowa.

The analysis also illustrated how fluidly money moves across states.

In the 2012 election cycle, New York billionaires George Soros and Michael Bloomberg and Chicago billionaire Nick Pritzker, whose family owns the Hyatt hotel chain, were among the single biggest donors to three ballot initiatives in California in 2012, with donations of about $500,000 each. (Disclosure: Soros’ Open Society Institute is among the nonprofit Investigative News Network’s funders.)

The trio donated, respectively, to the Committee for Three Strikes Reform, which seeks to limit the use of life sentences to violent third strike offenses; Californians for a Cure, which sought to increase cigarette taxes to fund cancer research (the proposition was narrowly defeated this summer); and Taxpayers for Public Safety, which is trying to repeal California’s Death Penalty.

“Criminal justice is an issue that George Soros had been concerned about for many years,” said his spokesman Michael Vachon. “And what happens in California is relevant. It’s a bellwether state. California immigration policy, prison reform, all kinds of things that happen in California tend to have a ripple effect through the country.” 

Bloomberg spokesman Marc LaVorgna said public health initiatives are a key issue for the mayor of New York and “he has always been willing to back up his support with contributions.”

Pritzker said through a spokesperson that he feels it’s “high time” California gets rid of its death penalty as Illinois has.

“Economic and moral reasons compel the conclusion that life without possibility of parole is far superior to the death penalty,” he said. “The entire country should be interested in this referendum in the largest state in the country.”

While some would cringe at wealthy individuals influencing laws in states where they don’t live, Candice Nelson, chair of the Department of Government at American University and an expert on campaign finance, said there’s another argument.

“If you believe in a cause, why should you only be able to give to a cause in your state?” she asked.

She said a deep look at individuals’ donations gives an indication not only of the causes that matter to them, but also of their social and political networks and what seats are in play that are seen as having national importance.

“It gets to the question of the network, of who’s asking who for money,” Nelson said. 

Bill Stetson, who together with his wife and daughter is the heaviest donor from Vermont this political cycle, said his personal friendships often motivate his donations. 

“If you have the money to give, just as is the case with giving to charities and nonprofits, you must give to candidates you believe in -- or who’s going to support those candidates? What kind of people will be in Washington and Montpelier?” asked Stetson, an environmental policy consultant. He said he donates principally to environmental causes and candidates who support them, regardless of party or state lines.

The Stetson family has donated over $200,000 to the national Democratic party and Democratic party committees in a long list of states: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, and New Hampshire. Jane is the finance chair for the DNC and a significant Obama bundler.

The INN analysis also showed the impact of state limits.

Vermont caps individuals’ donations to a maximum of $2,000 to state candidates and Political Action Committees. So far this year, the Stetsons have given only $9,000 to state campaigns and causes, even though they are close to prominent state politicians like former Vermont Governor Howard Dean.

By comparison, Missouri’s top donor, St. Louis financier Rex Sinquefield, has spent nearly $7 million in political contributions already this election cycle, much of it to fund committees that seek to eliminate Missouri’s state income tax and phase out the state control of the St. Louis Police Department through ballot measures. Missouri is one of four states with no campaign contribution limits.

A multi-millionaire who won’t divulge his net worth, he has given a total of $21.5 million since 2008.

But state limits aren’t the only determining factor. 

Iowa doesn’t limit state contributions either and the biggest donor there so far this campaign cycle, real estate businessman Bill Knapp II, gave a comparatively small $199,850.

One other factor could be at play: Unlike Missouri, Iowa does not have an initiative process for ballot measures. 

Iowa still has its share of contentious issues. It is a battleground state for the presidential election and a state Supreme Court retention vote has drawn interest -- one of the justices facing voters backed a 2009 decision legalizing same-sex marriage, angering conservatives.

As a result, it has been getting donations from out-of-state donors, large and small.

Chicago millionaire and Democratic supporter Fred Eychaner donated $25,000 to the campaign of Iowa Senate candidate Michael Gronstal in September 2011, making him the campaign’s largest single contributor. Florida businessman Gary Chartrand gave $50,000 to the Iowa Republican Party in November. It also received $15,000 from Susan and Howard Groff, who own a construction equipment rental company in California called Northwest Excavating. State candidates and parties in Iowa have also received donations from residents of New York, Texas, Michigan, and a number of other states.

According to the party, they’re giving of their own initiative.

"Some Republicans, in say, California, will donate to help the Republican Party [in Iowa] because they feel it will go further than if they donate where they live in a more Democratic state,” said Megan Stiles, spokesperson for the Iowa Republican Party. “But in terms of seeking out-of-state donations, we haven't really been doing that."

From a continuing  series of articles, Who Can Vote?, a News21 investigation of voting rights in America. Read the full series.

By Sarah Jane Capper and Michael Ciaglo
News21

Michael Ciaglo/News21

Jason Randall, 26, places his mail-in ballot in a drop box outside the Lane County Elections Office in Eugene, Ore. Although Oregon conducts all of its elections by mail, residents have the option of mailing their ballots or returning them at drop boxes located throughout the county.

In the partisan controversies over changes in voter eligibility and voter ID requirements, the growth of mail voting and no-excuse absentee voting have received little attention. While voter-impersonation fraud at the polls is nearly unheard of, both sides in the voter fraud debate acknowledge that absentee ballots are susceptible to fraud.

Early voting has begun, and more Americans than ever are expected to vote by mail this fall in the presidential, state and local elections. A gradual loosening of absentee voting laws in many states, especially in the West, and universal mail voting in Oregon and Washington have contributed to a significant shift in how Americans vote.

In 1972, less than 5 percent of American voters used absentee ballots, according to census data. By 2010, almost 16 percent of votes cast in the 2010 general election were absentee ballots, and nearly 5 percent more were mail ballots, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission's Election Administration and Voting Survey. If in-person early voters are counted, nearly 30 percent of the voters in 2010 did not go to the polls on Election Day.

"By 2016, casting a ballot in a traditional polling place will be a choice rather than a requirement," said Doug Chapin, a University of Minnesota researcher and director of the Program for Excellence in Election Administration. "There will still be people who go to the polling place because it's familiar, it's convenient, it's traditional. I think there will be fewer of those places."

More susceptible to fraud
Election fraud is rare, but it usually involves absentee or mail ballots, said Paul Gronke, a Reed College political scientist, who directs the Early Voting Information Center in Oregon. He cites what he calls a classic example of election fraud, a local official stealing votes by filling out absentee ballots. That was the case in Lincoln County, W.Va., where the sheriff and clerk pleaded guilty to distributing absentee ballots to unqualified voters and helping mark them during a 2010 Democratic primary.

Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, said vote-buying and bribery could occur more easily with mail voting and absentee voting. At a polling place, someone who bribed voters would have no way to verify that the bribe worked. A person who bribes mail voters could watch as they mark ballots or even mark ballots for them.

Gans also points to the potential to influence voters in gatherings that some call ballot-signing parties. A caregiver could mark a dependent's ballot.

"All the other types of fraud are essentially hard to do and easy to defend against," Gans said. "This isn't."

Putting a ballot inside an envelope and sealing it inside another envelope for mailing stirs skepticism, though. Election officials, political scientists and voters have concerns. They doubt that mailed ballots can be secure. They question whether forces beyond voters' control — smudges that disqualify ballots and breakdowns in keeping track of ballots, for example — will disallow votes. And some want to preserve Election Day traditions.

Gronke said that he hasn't seen evidence that bribes and coercion increase when voters use the mail. And ballot parties can allow people to discuss and make informed choices, he said, without pressuring their vote.

Those who have argued for stronger election security also say the mail could allow coercion by an abusive spouse; Gronke said he sees little evidence of that.

A Western phenomenon
Changes have occurred gradually to absentee voting, which began as a service to Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War and spread to civilians state by state.

Few paid attention when California extended absentee voting to anyone on request in 1978. The Los Angeles Times referred to a "little-noticed law" that eliminated the need to list a reason to get an absentee ballot. In the 2010 election, 40.3 percent of Californians voted absentee, according to Election Assistance Commission data.

Now, 27 states and the District of Columbia offer no-excuse absentee voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many states have dropped notary and witness requirements for all absentee voters. Some have permanent absentee lists to automatically send ballots to voters in every election, a de facto vote-by-mail system.

Most states have opted for a mixture, offering some combination of no-excuse absentee voting, early voting, mail voting and Election Day voting. These categories often blur and overlap. A voter might drop off a ballot in person instead of mailing it, for example.

"It has to do almost entirely with voter convenience," said Jennifer Drage Bowser, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "The more options there are outside the traditional polling place, the more voters like it."

The Obama campaign in 2008 received 59 percent of the early votes nationwide, according to a Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll. The Post reported, "For years, the profile of the early voter closely conformed to the characteristics of Republicans: older, white, more ideological and better informed about politics. ... But Obama turned the conventional wisdom on its head in 2008, drawing out vast numbers of African Americans to vote early in person, especially in southeastern states such as Florida. Many were organized by church to vote on the final Sunday before Election Day."

Western states have the highest levels of absentee voting, according to the Election Administration and Voting Survey. Those levels reached almost 70 percent in Colorado and 61 percent in Arizona, according to the survey. In 13 states, more than 20 percent of voters used absentee ballots.

All Washington and Oregon elections are conducted statewide by mail. In Washington, each county still maintains at least one voting center. In Oregon, each County Elections Office provides privacy booths for those who want to vote in person or need assistance.

Oregon approved a test of vote-by-mail in 1981, and about 40 percent of Oregon voters used absentee ballots in the 1994 federal election. By the next year Oregon statewide elections with candidates were by mail, and in 1998 the state voted for all elections to be by mail. Washington, where absentee voting was similarly popular, tested voting by mail and used it in all but one county until the state adopted all-mail ballots in 2011.

A generation of voters in Oregon has never set foot inside a voting booth.

Jessica Hall, 32, has 2-year-old twins and runs a home business. She always has voted by mail; Oregon switched shortly before her 18th birthday. She makes better decisions, Hall said, than if she had to stand in a long line outside a polling place. In the evening, when her children are asleep, Hall sits quietly and reads her ballot, then votes.

"Without vote-by-mail, I would be less likely to vote. I don't have time," Hall said. "There's no way my kids would allow me to stand in line and do that."

North Dakota counties can decide whether any of their elections should be conducted by mail. Eighteen other states allow vote-by-mail in some cases — uncontested Arkansas primaries with no other ballot measures, for example.

Resistance in the East
East of the Mississippi, the mail is more likely to be a back-up option for those who can't get to the polls on Election Day. That's the case in 15 states, including New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Jan Leighley, a political scientist at American University, offered culture and population density as possible explanations for the low popularity of absentee/mail voting in the East. Eastern and Midwestern states tend to have more established, formal political parties — a culture resistant to changing voting modes, Leighley said. In widely dispersed populations in Western states, voters and election officials have more to gain by using mail, Leighley said. They wouldn't have to pay to operate scarcely used polling places, and voters wouldn't have to travel as far to cast a ballot.

New Jersey has allowed mail ballots on request since 2005, but fewer people are using them than expected, said Robert Giles, director of the New Jersey Division of Elections.

About 5 percent of New Jersey votes were by mail in 2010, compared with about 4 percent in 2005, according to a report from the elections division.

"Going to the polls, I think it's ingrained in our society," Giles said about the slow growth of mail voting in his state. "For some people, there's a social aspect. They see the same election board workers every time they vote, and it offers a sense of community."

Weighing the benefits
Voting by mail is transforming American elections, said John Fortier, a political scientist of the Washington, D.C., Bipartisan Policy Center.

"It's not something we've fully thought out all the consequences of, and we certainly haven't had one big national debate over it," said Fortier, author of "Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises and Perils."

Proponents say the mail offers voters time to weigh choices and flexibility for their busy schedules, even more so than early in-person voting. It reverses how elections work, said Phil Keisling, former Oregon secretary of state and director of the Center for Public Service at Portland State University. "The default is bringing the ballot to the voter, not forcing the voter to go to the ballot," Keisling said.

Mail benefits outweigh potential fraud, supporters said.

"If you try to literally kill everything in your body that may kill you, you will definitely die," Keisling said. "If you try to wring every possibility of mischief and fraud out of a voting system, you will cramp it down so hard that very few people will end up voting."

Some see mail as a step backward from the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Charles Stewart, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the law mandated improved voting equipment. That improved technology made vote counts more accurate, he said, leading to 1 million more votes being counted. Mail ballot procedures have not been improved, Stewart said, estimating that errors such as pencil smudges, errant marks or breakdowns in keeping track of ballots can mean up to 7.6 million mail votes could go uncounted. Machines prevent voters from casting errant ballots, he said. "The two sides of that equation just don't balance out," Stewart said. "Many more ballots are sent out than come back."

Mail voters could base their decisions on different information than those who go to the polls, Gans said. And voting before Election Day leaves open the prospect for voters to turn in their ballots, then see a stock market crash or terrorist attack and wish they could change their votes, Gans said.

A longer window until voting time, however, means people can vote more carefully and make better-informed decisions, Keisling said.

The mail also means campaigns can't count on a final push the week before an election to sway voters, because many already will have cast ballots. Plus, the mail makes election-night results less reliable, Chapin said, because absentee ballots must be counted, and there are enough of them to change the election results.

The more immediate future of the mail and voting depends largely on cost, Chapin said. One could think it makes little sense to keep a lot of polling places open on Election Day when more people are voting by mail or early. States might move entirely to the mail, as Oregon and Washington, or scale back Election Day voting.

"If it costs me a lot of money to get just a few voters in person," Chapin said, "then I'm going to reduce my investment there and spend money elsewhere."

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Barbara Johnson, a National Council of La Raza voter registration canvasser, assists Quilvio Rodriguez, 26, of Miami, with his registration application on May 31, 2012, outside a grocery store in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.

Florida’s hanging chads and butterfly ballots in 2000 ignited the divisive battle that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court denying an election recount, effectively declaring that George W. Bush won the presidential election by 537 votes.

Another potentially close election is ahead, and the nation’s largest swing state is again at the center of a partisan debate over voting rules — this time, a fight about the removal of non-citizens from Florida’s voter roll and how the state oversees groups who register voters.

It is set against a national backdrop of a bitter fight between Democrats who say voting rights of students and minorities are endangered and Republicans who say that voter fraud is widespread enough to sway an election.

While many other states have considered laws that would require that people show a photo ID before they can vote, Florida has taken a different tack. Republicans there wrote a law in 2011 that they said would eliminate voter registration fraud by more closely controlling third-party registration, early voting hours and voter address updates.

“With the old law, some things weren’t illegal or designated as fraud,” said Rep. Dennis Baxley, an Ocala Republican and funeral home owner who sponsored the bill.

Voting rights advocates were most concerned about these features of the new law: reducing from 10 days to 48 hours the time that third-party groups had to hand in voter registrations and cutting early voting days from 14 to eight, including eliminating the Sunday before Election Day. Those whose address has changed to another county since they registered, must cast a provisional ballot and confirm their new address within two days.

Of the roughly 22 million Florida votes cast since 2000, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has received only 175 complaints of voting-related fraud, 11 of which led to convictions, according to data obtained by News21.

Baxley said his bill was a proactive step. “We wanted to prevent mishap and mischief.”

For Navene Shata, a 21-year-old south Florida college student, the changes meant she would have to update her address at least a month before voting. She works 30 hours a week around a busy class schedule and involvement with student government.

“I do keep watch and want to see what the candidates have to say,” Shata said, “but voting is frustrating when these pointless things get in the way.”

News21 is a program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that is helping to change the way journalism is taught in the U.S. and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry. It is headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Since 2006, nearly 500 top journalism students in the U.S. have participated in the landmark national initiative.

“The whole process was poor. Major changes were made in committee, and none of it was vetted,” Dockery said. “When one party has two-thirds of the vote, you can overrule anything. People go off to extremes.”

Gov. Rick Scott, who signed the 2011 law, took an interest in voter rolls when an analysis by the Florida Departments of State and of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles found 180,000 Floridians were registered to vote, had driver’s licenses but had not confirmed their citizenship status.

Secretary of State Ken Detzner discussed the issue with election supervisors in April. The state cut the list to 2,700 voters before sending it to county officials to verify citizenship status.

The problem? The shorter list included many citizens.

What’s become known as the voter purge worried many — from legal voters who were incorrectly targeted, to county officials to voting rights advocates.

Again, there is uncertainty in Florida, a state with troubled election history. Poll taxes were required until 1937, and voting rule changes in five counties are subject to federal review because of a pattern of civil rights violations.

The Department of Justice in June unsuccessfully sued in federal court to stop the voter removal, and another suit from four civil rights groups is pending.

Federal law prohibits sweeping state voter removals within 90 days of a federal election, and Florida has an Aug. 14 primary. But a federal judge in late June said the state can remove confirmed non-citizens.

“It’s the timing, it’s the fear-mongering,” said Myrna Perez of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a public policy group that opposed many voting rule changes nationally. “This scare tactic that there are hordes of non-citizens voting is wrong.”

Neither the 2000 presidential election controversy nor the current disputes much mattered to a group of Miami high school students who registered to vote in May.

“Eh, kinda. That was like 12 years ago. I was 5,” said Kristena Swanson, 17, a Southwest Miami High School senior and one of 318 students who registered May 30 in the school’s auditorium. “But, yeah, I know how bad the voting issues have been here before.”

Miami-Dade Public Schools became a Florida third-party voter registration group in March. Sixty district schools registered more than 10,000 high school students on April 4. They held a second drive May 30, and at school year’s end, 12,514 Miami-Dade students had registered — Florida’s third-largest registration group total.

Under the 2011 law, voter registration groups that formerly had 10 days to turn in completed registration forms were given just 48 hours to do so. They faced a $50 fine for each form turned in more than two days after completion, among other restrictions. But organizations statewide developed strategies to turn in voter registration forms within 48 hours, as the 2011 law required.

“When the law changed,” said Millie Fornell, a Miami-Dade associate superintendent, “we at the district office sat down and said, ‘How do we take the onus away from the schools?’”

The day after Miami-Dade’s second voter drive in May, however, a federal judge threw out the 48-hour rule, reverting to the previous 10-day period.

Baxley said he wasn’t that upset with the decision. “I don’t think they got much for their money on the lawsuit,” he said “If they want 10 days instead of two, fine.”

“They” are the League of Women Voters, the Florida Public Interest Research Group Education Fund and Rock the Vote, federal lawsuit plaintiffs. The league and Rock the Vote suspended registration drives for 13 months.

“We need the state to settle down and make sure people can be proud of Florida’s elections,” said Deirdre Macnab, the league’s Florida president. “Registering voters is our most popular job, and it was the first thing we did in 1939.” Its efforts were more informal door-to-door canvassing until the 1970s when counties first started deputizing registrants.

About 100 other third-party groups, including the nonpartisan National Council of La Raza, which advocates for Latino civil rights, continued registering voters throughout the past year.

“We don’t tell people who or what to vote for. We just want them to register,” said Natalie Carlier, La Raza’s regional coordinator. And its canvassers do not only register Hispanics.

On a humid May afternoon, about 20 La Raza canvassers gathered in an upstairs room of their nondescript office building near downtown Miami. Carlier stood in the middle of the canvassers’ half-circle, speaking to part-time workers who cover parts of Miami several hours a day, five days a week.

Carlier fielded questions and problems that the canvassers recently encountered. Charts on the wall noted each day’s voter tally. A paper cutout of a thermometer’s mercury showed how many voters her group has to register to reach its goal of 35,000-plus before November.

Through July, La Raza had registered more than 35,000 voters, according to the Florida Division of Elections.

Barbara Johnson, 36, was born in Cuba to an African-American father and Cuban mother. She joined La Raza two years ago on a whim — quitting a retail job — and became dedicated to the work.

Hundreds of times a day, any time someone walks past her spot outside a Little Havana supermarket, she has a rapid-fire approach.

“Hola! Como esta? Esta registrada para votar?” she gets a curt nod in return from an older woman. “Any updates? Change of address? New voter card?” Johnson, like other canvassers, moves easily between English and Spanish.

Angelica Arroyo, 36, came out of a Publix supermarket and filled out a card with her teenage daughter watching. “I wasn’t registered and wanted to vote,” Arroyo said in Spanish. “I would have tried to register, but I’m happy I found her just now.”

Navene Shata was up early during the school year, in class all day at Palm Beach State College and worked almost full time at a CVS pharmacy.

Her schedule is typical of many working college students without much free time.

Shata recently moved from Boca Raton to Deerfield Beach — moving from Palm Beach County to Broward County in the process — which will help accommodate her new studies in pharmacy at Nova Southeastern University. Before the 2011 law, voters could change counties, update their address on Election Day and vote. Now, voters who don’t change their county registration before Oct. 29 can cast a provisional ballot and must return to the elections office within 10 days of voting and prove their new address is valid if they want their provisional ballot counted.

It was not an issue in January’s closed primary, when only Republicans could vote.

In Broward County, where Shata now lives, voters cast 4,222 provisional ballots in 2008; 3,958 were not counted — one of the worst acceptance rates in the state for that election.

Voters who recently moved between counties and don’t update their registration could face problems in November. Shata said she’ll make time this summer to update her registration, although “I don’t understand why the law was changed.”

The governor continues to defend the state’s non-citizen voter purge.

“We’re doing the right thing,” Scott said on CNN in June. “I can’t imagine anybody not wanting to make sure non-citizens don’t dilute a legitimate U.S. citizen’s vote.”

The process began well ahead of the 2012 election. For months, Florida’s Department of State requested access to a federal database with better information about citizenship than the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security denied access, claiming the database was not designed as a voter-roll maintenance tool. The state sued, claiming that federal law requires the database be shared.

The U.S. Department of Justice countersued to block the purge. The same judge who reversed the 48-hour third-party registration law said Florida is allowed to remove non-citizen voters, but most county officials refused to do so because they do not trust the state’s list.

Homeland Security agreed in July to share its Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a system that Detzner said updates every 72 hours.

“Keep in mind,” Detzner said, “if we have a name that we run across the SAVE database and it’s a citizen, that person will never be processed on down to the (county election) supervisors. Supervisors are ultimately the ones that make a decision about taking someone off of the rolls.”

Michael Ertel, supervisor of elections in Seminole County, just north of Orlando, is concerned about the dispute’s effects on voters: “What I don’t want to see is people reading these stories and then saying, ‘You know what? The process doesn’t work. Forget it. I don’t want to vote.’”

Ertel supported the law’s changes and voter-roll maintenance — presuming it’s conducted properly — but said he fears the fight could disillusion voters.

“When they don’t go to the polls,” Ertel said, “that’s a sad bit of collateral damage.”

Andrea Rumbaugh and Joe Henke of News21 contributed to this article. Joe Henke was a Hearst Foundations Fellow this summer at News21.

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