NBC News on courting older voters with phone banks and pickleball.
WaPo on courting younger voters with beer and birth control.
And the money quote: “‘You have to be able to drink the beer whether you voted or not,’ said Brian Svoboda, a campaign finance attorney at Perkins Coie LLP.”
[Also: don’t forget the soundtrack.]
Colorado Public Radio with more on the proposed initiative to implement a top-four primary with ranked-choice voting for the general election.
Meanwhile, there’s a signature campaign in Maine to get two initiatives on the ballot: voter ID and a repeal of participation in the national popular vote compact.
Mother Jones parses the most recent campaign finance data.
Politico has thoughts (“Wall Street Titans Shake Off Qualms and Embrace Trump”), which Anthony Scaramucci echoes.
The lede in The Hill:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce received an $800,000 wire transfer from billionaire donor Hank Meijer days after it endorsed his son, then-Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), in a contentious 2022 primary, according to previously unreported internal emails reviewed by The Hill.
. . .
But because the ad — titled “Thank you, Rep. Peter Meijer” — does not explicitly advocate for his election or defeat, the pro-business lobbying giant did not have to legally disclose the donation from Hank Meijer, the co-chair and CEO of the Meijer chain of superstores. It also did not have to disclose any other potential contributions behind the $1.8 million it told the FEC it spent on “electioneering communications” that cycle.
The N.Y. Times with the report on matching funds in a state Assembly race that’s something of an outlier:
The report also contrasts the state system with the city’s system:
For years, government watchdogs had urged state leaders to adopt a matching-funds system similar to New York City’s long-established version, contending it would amplify small donors’ voices and reduce the influence of big-money interests. Lawmakers, especially long-tenured ones who tend to benefit from institutional donors, were hesitant to make a change.
But in 2020, the Legislature approved a weaker form of the city’s system, settling for one with incumbent-friendly features, far less oversight and fewer safeguards.
The state system is much more generous than the city’s, which matches small-dollar donations at an eight-to-one rate. State candidates in competitive races can get up to $12 in public money for each dollar donated by residents of their district who give from $5 to $50, and smaller matches for sums above that, up to $250.
Yet unlike the city’s program, the state has no spending limits or mandatory audits for all candidates, and does not publish the identity of bundlers, the influential fund-raisers who bring in money from others.
The state also has far more to oversee and fewer resources to do it: Officials must monitor candidates running for more than three times the number of offices — 217 versus 59 — than their city counterparts, despite having fewer than half of the employees and less than a quarter of the budget. State races are also more frequent: Legislative candidates run every two years, compared with every four for City Council.
The Georgia Recorder with a piece on the fights over control of local elections boards responsible for certifying election results.