The 990 tax filing was obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with the Guardian. It points to the pivotal role that Heritage Action is increasingly playing in shaping the rules that govern US democracy.
The efforts help explain the unprecedented tidal wave of restrictive voting laws that spread across Republican-controlled states in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. The Brennan Center reported that more voter suppression laws were passed in 2021 than in any year since it began monitoring voting legislation more than a decade ago.
The expenditures also signal a dramatic increase in Heritage Action’s advocacy activities. In 2020, Heritage Action had reported no spending at all on outside lobbying.
Heritage Action, whose board includes the Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, is set up as a 501(c)4 under the US tax code which exempts it from paying federal taxes. It operates as a “dark money” group, avoiding disclosing the sources of its total annual revenue of over $18m.
In the past two years the organization through its public messaging has echoed Donald Trump’s lie that US elections are marked by rampant fraud. A private plan prepared by Heritage Action last year set out a two-year, $24m “election integrity” strategy.
The plan, obtained by Documented, proposed a two-pronged approach that would work to block moves by Democrats in Congress to bolster voting rights while at the same time pressing Republican-controlled states to impose restrictions on access to the ballot box. It said: “Where Democrats hold power, we must defend against bad policy. Where conservatives and our allies are in power, we must advance changes that protect the lawful votes of Americans.”
The Heritage Action plan, which was first reported by the New York Times, is being published by the Guardian for the first time.
Part of Heritage Action’s two-year strategy is to promote what it calls “model election laws”, focusing initially on eight battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin. In a private meeting with donors in Tucson, Arizona, in 2021, the group’s executive director, Jessica Anderson, boasted about the role Heritage Action had played in pressing Republican-controlled legislatures to impose strict restrictions on voting, including limits on mail-in voting and early voting days.
In a video of that meeting obtained by Documented, Anderson told the donors that the group acted “quickly and quietly”, bragging that “honestly nobody noticed” their behind-the-scenes influence. Heritage Action staff have registered to lobby in at least two dozen states.
The laser-like focus on key swing states like Georgia appears to have had an impact. The New York Times found that one-third of the 68 voting bills filed in Georgia in 2021 contained policy measures and language that aligned closely with proposals from Heritage Action.
The group has publicly claimed that it had a hand in advancing 11 voting bills in at least eight states in 2021, though in some cases legislation was passed in only one chamber or went on to be vetoed by the state’s governor.
Heritage Foundation, under the auspices of its elections supremo Hans von Spakovsky, curates an “election fraud database”. It claims to expose the errors, omissions and mistakes made by election officials, but it presents incomplete and misleading information and underscores how exceptionally rare fraud is within the US system.