Aug 25, 2026

Foreign money in American elections is legal in one place almost nobody watches, and Jason Snead's team found it. Federal law has banned foreign nationals from giving to candidates and political action committees for decades. It says nothing about ballot measures, which are treated as part of a state legislative function rather than a campaign for office. Snead tells Jenny Beth Martin what came through that opening: a Swiss billionaire who has said he never wanted to be an American citizen gave roughly 300 million dollars to one left wing fund, and that fund spent 130 million dollars driving ballot measures in 26 states. Ohio was the first state to shut the door, after foreign tied money went after control of the state's redistricting process in a fight Snead says could have moved three to six congressional seats. Every Democrat in the Ohio legislature voted against the ban. Attorney Marc Elias sued to overturn it in Ohio and in Kansas, and lost both times. Eleven states have now passed it. The rest of the hour is the 2027 state legislative plan: upfront proof of citizenship, the Supreme Court ruling that forced Arizona into a bifurcated ballot, an interstate system for cleaning voter rolls that the American Legislative Exchange Council has adopted as model policy, voter identification for mail ballots, and the poll worker trainings running in Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin over the next six weeks. Jason Snead is Executive Director of the Honest Elections Project. More at jennybethshow.com and teapartypatriots.org.

Read Full Show Notes →