Disclosure & Transparency

Ishan Mehta, the director for media and democracy at watchdog group Common Cause, said he was disappointed the FEC decided not to require paid influencer disclosures. He said regulations on paid social media political content should be the same as those for political television and print ads, which are required by the FEC to include disclaimers. “The ability to pay influencers to carry their message on behalf of a campaign is a loophole,” he said.

Also on Monday, Public Citizen and Common Cause submitted petitions urging state election officials in Alabama, Louisiana, and Wisconsin to regulate deepfakes in political campaign communications. "AI deepfakes represent a very clear and present danger to our democracy," said Ishan Mehta, director of Common Cause's media and democracy program. "The opportunity for deceiving and misleading voters has never been so acute as it is today with the vast improvements in fake computer-generated images and voices." "And ultimately if voters later realize that they have been duped by false and misleading—yet very convincing—campaign ads, they are going to lose even more confidence in the value of elections," Mehta warned.

The 2024 election will be the first where artificial intelligence, or AI, could play a big role — and not necessarily a good one. Today in Sacramento, the head of California Common Cause announced proposals to address the potential problems from things like deepfakes intended to confuse voters. Scott Shafer is joined by Jonathan Mehta Stein, head of Common Cause, to discuss threats posed by technology for this election.

Virginia Kase Solomón will be the next president and CEO of Common Cause. Currently CEO of the League of Women Voters, she will start her new role in February and will be the first Hispanic person to lead the democratic watchdog. She succeeds Karen Hobert Flynn, who died this spring after three decades with the organization.

Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group, revealed that Thomas didn’t report that source of income on his financial disclosures, despite a legal requirement to do so. The New York Times also raised the possibility that Thomas may have flown on Crow’s jet at least three times. If Thomas had, in fact, taken those flights and Crow footed the bill, the justice failed to disclose that, too. The conference told the lawmakers and Common Cause that the Financial Disclosure Committee would look into both issues. Early in 2012, the committee held a meeting. Some of the judges in attendance expected a serious conversation about how to handle the matter. If there is “reasonable cause” to believe a judge might have intentionally falsified a disclosure or omitted information, the conference, through the Financial Disclosure Committee, is supposed to refer the case to the attorney general. Instead, the committee’s chair, a Kentucky district judge and President Bill Clinton appointee named Joseph H. McKinley Jr., said immediately that he had decided to end the inquiry, explaining that Thomas already amended his filings to include Ginni’s source of income, according to one of the judges in the room.

"We're pleased to see Governor Whitmer sign this long overdue ethics reform into law—but ultimately, the law falls short of voters' expectations," said Quentin Turner, director of Common Cause Michigan, an organization seeking to promote greater government accountability. "Despite overwhelming, bi-partisan support for greater transparency from our elected officials, lawmakers weakened the law to shield themselves from public scrutiny."