- Works to help Democrats get elected to the office of Secretary of State in
selected swing, or battleground, states - Receives funding from Democracy Alliance members George Soros and Rob Stein,
amongmany others
See also: Democracy Alliance Mark Ritchie Al Franken
The Secretary of State Project (SoSP) was established in July 2006
as an independent devoted to helping Democrats get elected to the office of secretary-of-state in selected swing, or battleground, states; these were states where the margin of victory in the 2004 presidential election (betweenGeorge W. Bush and John Kerry)
had been 120,000 votes or less.1 One of the principal duties of the
secretary of state is to serve as the chief election officer who certifies candidates as well as election results in his or her state.2 The holder of this office, then, can potentially
play a key role in determining the winner of a close election.
SoSP's co-founders were Democracy Alliance member Michael Kieschnick (who also founded Working Assets and serves as a board member of the leftist evangelical group Sojourners); Becky
Bond (who also has affiliations with Working Assets and the New Organizing Institute); and James Rucker (who co-founded Color of
Change and formerly served as director of grassroots mobilization for MoveOn.org Political Action and Moveon.org Civic Action).
The idea for SoSP germinated ,3 when the Project's co-founders blamed then-Ohio secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, for presidential candidate John Kerry’s defeat. To their chagrin, Blackwell hadruled that Ohio ()4 would
not count 5―even those submitted by properly registered voters―if they had been submitted at the wrong precincts. Though the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ultimately upheld Blackwell’s decision, SoSP’s founding members nonetheless received Blackwell's ruling with the same bitterness they had felt regarding former Florida (Republican) secretary of state Katherine Harris’s handling of the infamous ballot recount in 2000, when
Bush defeated Al Gore in the presidential election. According to , SoSP’s leaders and foot soldiers alike “religiously believe that right-leaning secretaries of state helped the GOP steal the presidential elections in Florida in 2000 ... and in Ohio in 2004.”6
Moreover, in 2006 SoSP accused Blackwell and Republicans of in Ohio.7 “We were tired of Republican manipulation of elections,” said Michael Kieschnick. “It seemed like lots of decisions were made by people who were pretty clearly political operatives.”8 “Any serious commitment to wrestling control of the country from the Republican Party must include removing their political operatives from deciding who can vote and whose votes will count,” added Becky Bond.9
To establish “” against similar disappointments in subsequent political races, SoSP in 2006 targeted its funding efforts on the secretary-of-state races inseven swing states―Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Colorado, and Michigan.10 As USA Today reported at the time: “The political battle for control of the federal government has opened up a new front: the obscure but vital state offices that determine who votes and how those votes are counted.”11 Democrats emerged victorious in five of those seven elections―all except Colorado and Michigan. SoSP as “an administrative firewall” designed, “in anticipation of a photo-finish presidential election,” to protect Democrats' “electoral interests in … the most important battleground states.”12
Because few Americans recognize the importance of the secretary of state’s duties, candidates for that office tend to draw fewer (and smaller) donations than do most state-level campaigns.
Consequently, even a from just a handful of generous donors can make an enormous difference in the comparative financial resources of rival campaigns, and thereby tip the scales decidedly in favor of the better-funded candidate. Among the more notable contributors to SoSP are Democracy Alliance members George Soros, Rob Stein, Drummond Pike, Gail Furman, Michael
Kieschnick, John R. Hunting, Paul Rudd, Pat Stryker, Nicholas Hanauer, Patricia Bauman, Megan Hull, Scott Wallace, Barbara Lee (not the congresswoman), Anne Bartley, Blair Hull, Rob McKay, Sanford Newman, William J. Roberts, Tim Gill, and Susie Tompkins Buell.13
In 2006, SoSP raised a total of $500,000 for the secretary-of-state candidates whom it supported14―a small sum by traditional political fundraising standards, but a weighty total in
comparison to the sums that such candidates had typically garnered in the past.
One beneficiary of SoSP funding in 2006 was Democrat Jennifer
Brunner, who defeated incumbent Republican Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio. Said Brunner, “I received significant support from the SoS Project, which helped me toward the election.” Brunner went on to make her influence felt in several significant ways two years later, during the 2008 election cycle:
- She ruled that Ohio residents should be permitted, during the designated early-voting
period extending from late September to early October, to register and
vote on the very same day.15 - In
a separate matter, Brunner sought to effectively invalidate many of the approximately one million absentee-ballot applications that Republican
presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign had issued. Each of those forms had been printed with a checkbox next to a statement affirming that the voter
was a qualified elector; Brunner maintained that if an applicant failed to check the box—even if he or she signed the form—the application could be rejected. But
Republicans noted that state law did not require the box to be checked as long as the voter signed the ballot. The Ohio Supreme Court subsequently
overturned Brunner's directive on grounds that it served “no vital purpose or public interest.”16 - In October 2008, Brunner refused to comply with county election-board requests that she turn over approximately 200,000 voter-registration forms in which the name did not match the driver's
license or Social Security number.17
Another early beneficiary of SoSP support was Democrat Mark Ritchie, who, with SoSP help in 2006, defeated a two-term incumbent Republican in the race for Minnesota
secretary of state. Ritchie acknowledged his debt to SoSP when he said, “I want to thank the Secretary of State Project and its thousands of grass-roots donors for helping to push my campaign over the top.”18
Other included George Soros, Drummond Pike, Deborah Rappaport
(wife of venture capitalist Andrew Rappaport), and Heather Booth.
A former to ACORN,19
Ritchie in the 1990s had been a member of the now-defunct socialist .20
Moreover, he has ideological ties to the Communist Party USA and has been described by communist Tim Wheeler as a “friend” of the
Party.21
Ritchie went on to play a major role in a crucial state election in 2008, when George Soros personally to SoSP.22
In October of that year, a conservative watchdog group exhorted
Ritchie to order “a thorough review and verification of all voter-registration records,” citing some 261,000 duplicative registrations and 63,000 voter listings with invalid or nonexistent addresses. But Ritchie dismissed those pleas as politically motivated attempts “to create a cloud over an election so people don't accept the outcome.”23
Then, in Minnesota’s November election for U.S. Senate, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman finished 725 votes ahead of Democratic challenger Al Franken; the thin margin of
victory, however, triggered an automatic recount. With Mark Ritchie presiding over the recount process during the ensuing weeks, Coleman's lead gradually dwindled due to what journalist Matthew Vadum describes as a long series of “appalling
irregularities” that invariably benefited Franken.
, during the recount process a number of ballots were found in an
election judge's car; one Minnesota county suddenly discovered 100 new votes for Franken and claimed that a clerical error had caused them to previously go uncounted; another county tallied 177 more votes than it had recorded on Election Day; and yet another county reported 133 fewer votes than its voting
machines had tabulated. “Almost every time new ballots materialized, or tallies were updated or corrected, Franken benefited,” writes Vadum. In addition, voted illegally in two particular Minnesota
counties.
By the time the recount (and a court challenge by Coleman) ended
in April 2009, Franken held . In June, Franken was officially declared the victor.24
In 2008, SoSP in Missouri, Montana, Oregon and West Virginia; all four Democrats won. These results represented yet another
high return on a relatively small financial investment for SoSP. As of Septemberof that year, SoSP had raised $280,000 for the campaigns it was targeting -- not a large sum by any means, but enough to have a profound effect on the lightly funded Secretary of State races.
In the midterm congressional elections of 2010 , when Democrats suffered historic losses in the House of Representatives, five out of seven SoSP-backed candidates went down to defeat; only incumbents Mark Ritchie of Minnesota and Debra Bowen of California emerged victorious.25 NOTES:
1 Welcome capitalresearch.org - BlueHost.com
2 Duties of the Secretary of State
3 Secretary Of State Watch | American Courthouse;
The American Spectator : Soros Vote Counters
4 CNN.com Election 2004
5 A provisional ballot is used to record a vote when
a given voter's eligibility is in question. Whether a provisional ballot is
counted is contingent upon the verification of that voter's eligibility. (See Provisional Ballots Issues.)
6 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
7 Hearings on Ohio Voting Put 2004 Election in Doubt
8 Secretaries of state give Dem firewall - Avi Zenilman - POLITICO.com
9 Welcome capitalresearch.org - BlueHost.com
10 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
11 USATODAY.com - Top vote counter becomes prize job
12 Secretaries of state give Dem firewall - Avi Zenilman - POLITICO.com
13 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
14 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
15 Ohio Battles Over Tuesday's Early Voting - CBS News
16 Brunner may toss signatures on payday-lending ballot issue | The Columbus Dispatch
17 Justices Block Effort to Challenge Ohio Voters - NYTimes.com
18 Could Senate recount referee's résumé color the result? | StarTribune.com
19 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
20 The New Zeal Blog has moved...
21 Mark Ritchie - KeyWiki
22 http://forms.irs.gov/politicalOrgsSe...7&formType=E72
23 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
24 The American Spectator : Fighting Frankenstein
; Felons for Franken - WSJ.com
25 Soros-supported ‘Secretary of State Project’ dealt blow in midterm elections | The Daily Caller
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