Dark Money for Dummies — Part 2

Why It Exists (and Why It’s Legal)

Once people understand what dark money is, the next question is obvious:

If this creates so many problems, why does it exist at all?

The short answer is not corruption or conspiracy.
The longer answer is classification.

The difference between campaigns and “issues”

U.S. election law draws a sharp line between:

• Campaign activity (which is regulated and disclosed)

• Issue advocacy (which is far less regulated)

If an organization explicitly tells you to:

“Vote for” or “Vote against” a candidate

…it is treated as a campaign and must disclose donors.

If it instead says:

• “Support energy independence”

• “Protect public safety”

• “Stand up for local jobs”

• “Defend parental rights”

…it may be classified as issue advocacy, even if the timing, targeting, and messaging clearly benefit one candidate or policy outcome.

That distinction is the foundation dark money is built on.

Why nonprofits are central to this system

Many dark money organizations are nonprofits because nonprofits were never designed to function like political campaigns. They were meant to:

• Promote causes

• Educate the public

• Advocate broadly for values

Over time, those purposes expanded — legally — to include political messaging that stops just short of explicit campaigning.

Once that door opened, the incentives became obvious:

• Donors could influence politics without public scrutiny

• Organizations could spend heavily without disclosure

• Voters would see the message, but not the full context

Nothing about this requires bad actors. It works even when everyone is technically following the rules.

Why “just disclose it” hasn’t fixed the problem

It’s tempting to think the solution is simple: require more disclosure.

The problem is that disclosure alone often fails in practice because:

• Information is scattered across filings few people read

• Money moves through multiple layers of organizations

• The source may be technically disclosed but practically untraceable

• Voters encounter the message long before they encounter the data

By the time transparency arrives, the influence has already done its work.

Dark money doesn’t rely on secrecy so much as opacity through complexity.

Why the law tolerates this

Courts have consistently protected issue advocacy because:

• Political speech is broadly protected

• The line between ideas and elections is hard to police

• Over-regulation risks suppressing legitimate civic activity

In other words, the system tolerates dark money not because it’s admired, but because the alternative risks collateral damage to free expression.

This creates a tradeoff:

• Protect speech broadly

• Accept influence that is difficult to see

That tradeoff becomes more consequential the smaller and quieter the political arena is.

Which brings us to the next question.

If dark money is everywhere, why does it seem to concentrate so heavily in state and local politics?