A sprawling network of left-wing donors and organizations poured roughly $638 million through tax-exempt voter-registration and get-out-the-vote groups during the 2024 election cycle as part of what researchers describe as a sophisticated, Democrat-favoring “vote machine” operating through the charitable sector and extending into future elections, according to a report obtained exclusively by Breitbart News ahead of its Monday release.
The 64-page report from conservative watchdog Capital Research Center (CRC), The “Charities” Influencing Elections: 2024 and Beyond, follows left-wing money through tax-exempt organizations into an interconnected election-influence infrastructure spanning voter registration, Census activism, redistricting, the National Popular Vote Compact, and ranked-choice voting.
CRC researchers examined financial records from 83 of the leading 501(c)(3) voter-registration and get-out-the-vote organizations, finding that they spent approximately $638.7 million in 2024 — a 30 percent increase over 2020, or roughly 10 percent after inflation — even as inflation-adjusted spending through traditional political action committees fell by approximately 20 percent. The report argues that the tax-exempt infrastructure has increasingly been used to disproportionately benefit Democrats while offering advantages unavailable through conventional political organizations, including tax-deductible donations and far less donor disclosure.
“Americans deserve to know whether tax-deductible charitable contributions are being illicitly used to subsidize partisan political operations,” CRC President Scott Walter said in a statement provided to Breitbart News.
“This report follows the money and reveals a coordinated infrastructure working to influence who votes, how districts are drawn, how we elect our President, and ultimately who controls the government,” he continued. “Congress, the IRS, and state authorities need to examine these findings and hold ‘charities’ accountable.”
The report traces the roots of what CRC calls the modern “tax-exempt vote machine” to a 2015 plan revealed in leaked emails belonging to longtime Democratic operative John Podesta, who would go on to chair Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
One of the leaked emails, sent to Podesta by the president of Swiss billionaire and major left-wing donor Hansjörg Wyss’s private foundation, laid out a detailed $100 million plan using 501(c)(3) foundations and charities to register millions of voters. Tables in the plan calculated the number of “total non-white” votes the effort could generate across eight battleground states, while still-visible edits showed passages discussing “beating Republicans” and “reshaping the electorate” had been removed, according to CRC.
CRC argues the documents demonstrate the proposed registration effort was designed to target demographic groups expected to disproportionately vote Democratic while operating under the banner of nonpartisan voter participation.
Wyss has since emerged as a major financier of left-wing causes, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations including the Sixteen Thirty Fund and New Venture Fund, nonprofits formerly managed by Arabella Advisors. The Arabella network became one of the left’s largest dark-money operations, serving as an umbrella for organizations and projects bankrolled by wealthy liberal donors.
By 2020, the report notes, a leaked memo from the Democratic-aligned super PAC Mind the Gap described charitable voter registration as “4 to 10 times more cost effective than the next best alternative” at “netting additional Democratic votes.”
Ahead of the 2024 election, eBay founder and liberal billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund launched the “All by April” initiative, urging donors to move election-related grants to 501(c)(3) organizations early enough to maximize their impact before November. According to CRC, 174 donors signed the pledge, with the initiative estimating that it mobilized $155 million, including $79 million in new election-related 501(c)(3) grants.
One of the largest organizations in the network was the Everybody Votes Campaign (EVC), an umbrella name encompassing the Voter Registration Project, Voter Registration Project Education Fund, and Register America. The operation raised more than $75 million in 2024, up from approximately $50 million in 2020, with much of the money distributed to other left-leaning nonprofits and canvassing firms.
Among them was Field+Media Corps, which received $4.6 million from the Voter Registration Project for “voter registration support” in 2024. Seven employees of the firm were later charged by Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday with offenses including forgery and tampering with public records after thousands of allegedly fraudulent voter-registration forms were submitted in several battleground districts.
Another EVC grantee was the New Georgia Project, founded by two-time failed Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. The organization agreed to pay a record $300,000 penalty after the Georgia State Ethics Commission found campaign-finance violations stemming from its work during Abrams’s unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial campaign. The organization later dissolved.
The report also singles out the left-wing Voter Participation Center (VPC), which has long targeted what it calls “underrepresented” constituencies for registration efforts. During the 2024 election, VPC came under scrutiny after it was found to have filtered digital voter-registration advertisements to exclude users with interests including NASCAR, Duck Dynasty, and golf — audiences critics argued were more likely to contain Republican-leaning voters. The episode prompted Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) to call for an IRS investigation into whether the organization was complying with its tax-exempt status.
CRC also contrasts VPC’s longstanding claims of voter suppression with the organization’s own subsequent research.
After Georgia enacted an election-integrity law in 2021 that then-President Joe Biden denounced as “Jim Crow 2.0,” VPC joined an unsuccessful lawsuit seeking to overturn the measure. Yet a September 2025 VPC analysis found turnout among its designated “underrepresented” constituencies — including black, Latino and Asian voters, voters under 35, and unmarried women — increased by nearly 200,000 votes, or 6.8 percent, in Georgia between 2020 and 2024, while turnout among voters outside those categories fell by nearly 180,000.
CRC argues the same left-wing philanthropic infrastructure extends beyond voter registration and the 2024 election cycle.
The report examines $118 million in philanthropic spending surrounding the 2020 Census — up from $38 million in 2010 — through an effort organized by the Funders Committee for Civic Participation and its Funders Census Initiative, formed with support from the Ford Foundation and other major left-wing donors.
The Census Bureau’s post-enumeration survey subsequently found six states had been undercounted and eight overcounted. CRC cites an analysis concluding that the errors were large enough that two congressional seats apportioned to Democratic-leaning Minnesota and Rhode Island would otherwise have gone to Florida.
Another chapter follows more than $66 million behind an April 2026 Virginia redistricting ballot measure that could have transformed the state’s congressional delegation from a narrow 6-5 Democratic advantage to as much as a 10-1 Democratic advantage.
Supporters of the new map were “significantly better resourced,” according to the report, which traces millions of dollars to committees affiliated with left-wing billionaire George Soros, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and organizations associated with the former Arabella Advisors network. Virginia voters approved the measure, but the state Supreme Court invalidated the new map two weeks later over procedural violations.
The investigation further examines the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would require participating states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote regardless of which candidate carried each individual state. The report traces much of the movement’s backing to left-wing donors, organized labor, the Soros network, the Tides Foundation, and organizations associated with the former Arabella network.
States participating in the compact currently represent 222 of the 270 electoral votes required for it to take effect, according to the report.
CRC also scrutinizes the push for ranked-choice voting, noting that voters rejected ballot measures involving the system in at least five states in 2024, while 19 states have enacted prohibitions against its use.
Taken together, CRC argues the findings expose a broader migration of left-wing political money away from conventional political organizations and into the charitable sector — allowing wealthy donors and advocacy networks to finance large-scale election-related activities through tax-advantaged organizations whose contributors generally remain hidden from public view.
“The report is built around a simple through-line,” CRC said in announcing its findings: “much of the ‘money in politics’ that voters distrust doesn’t flow through political channels — it hides within charities that pretend to be nonpartisan.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein
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