The IRS shut down hundreds of conservative Tea Party groups during the Obama years – silencing them just in time for the 2012 election.
Now the same system protecting Democrat "charities" is bigger than ever.
What investigators just uncovered about where that money is actually going should end the debate about whether any of this is legal.
Democrat Dark Money Charities Raised $640 Million While the Party Itself Went Broke
The Democrat Party's traditional fundraising cratered 30% in 2024 – after inflation – compared to the 2020 cycle. Enthusiasm was flat. Voters checked out. But one corner of the operation didn't just survive. It set an all-time record.
Capital Research Center's latest report found that more than 80 left-wing get-out-the-vote organizations pulled in nearly $640 million in 2024 – a 10% inflation-adjusted gain over 2020, in the same year the party's regular fundraising fell off a cliff.
The groups call themselves charities. They register with the IRS as 501(c)(3) organizations, which means their donors get tax deductions and stay anonymous. The IRS rule is simple: to keep that status, you must be nonpartisan.
They are not nonpartisan. The Democrats know it. The IRS knows it. And a Democratic Super PAC was caught telling its own donors in writing that "nonpartisan" voter registration targeting "underrepresented" communities is four to ten times more cost-effective at "netting additional Democratic votes" than traditional campaign spending.
The DNC's own 2024 autopsy document admits the party leans on these outside organizations to do its organizing and voter registration work. It even acknowledges that legal restrictions keep these groups from publicly identifying as Democrat operations. The party knows what they are. The law just won't let them say so.
Billionaires Are Pumping Democrat Dark Money Groups Full of Cash for 2026
The 2024 record wasn't an accident. A campaign called All by April – run by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar's Democracy Fund – pushed wealthy donors to move their money into get-out-the-vote charities early so the groups could operate at full capacity through Election Day. In 2024, that campaign steered $155 million into nonprofit turnout operations.
All by April has already directed $268 million for the 2026 midterm cycle. That's a 72% jump – in a midterm year, when voter intensity is lower and Democrat donors are historically more cautious.
The pass-through schemes inside this machine are elaborate. Capital Research Center found that three 501(c)(3)s – America Votes Education Fund, Guarantee Our Votes Project, and Democracy Matters Foundation – routed their entire annual expenditure to affiliated 501(c)(4) organizations.
In some cases, the board members of the (c)(3) charity simultaneously serve as the president, chief operating officer, and treasurer of the (c)(4) partner. The same people, different letterhead, laundering political spending through tax-exempt status.
This is not charity. This is a political operation with a tax break.
These Voter Registration Groups Keep Getting Caught Breaking the Law
The Voter Participation Center was caught filtering its Facebook ads to exclude likely Republican voters – blocking users with interests in John Wayne, the Daytona 500, and Duck Dynasty while targeting users interested in left-wing causes. Sen. Tom Cotton personally wrote the IRS demanding an investigation.
Consultants for the Everybody Votes campaign were caught submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registrations in both Michigan and Pennsylvania. The New Georgia Project was hit with the largest state ethics fine in Georgia history for illicit partisan campaigning. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative was raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into fraudulent voter registration.
Capital Research Center's investigation showed that Everybody Votes was built in the email chains of Democratic operatives, including John Podesta and a representative of Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss – a foreign national who cannot legally contribute to any American campaign, PAC, or party, but faces no such restriction on donating to a charity.
That's not a theoretical concern. That's a concrete example of how foreign money enters American elections through a gap Democrats have no interest in closing.
This same IRS stood by while Lois Lerner's unit froze hundreds of conservative Tea Party groups during Obama's first term – reportedly blocking conservative groups from receiving tax-exempt status for years – and potentially handing Obama the 2012 election by silencing an entire wing of the opposition.
The House voted on a bipartisan basis to hold Lerner in criminal contempt. She never faced charges.
The IRS has the tools to stop this. Consistent enforcement of the nonpartisanship rules already on the books would dismantle most of this machine overnight. Whether any administration uses those tools is a separate question with an obvious answer.
A $640 million tax-exempt shadow party is heading into November – subsidized through the deductions its donors claim on federal tax returns, staffed by operatives who have been caught cheating in state after state, and growing faster in a midterm year than it ever has before.
Republicans had better be ready for it.
Sources:
- Parker Thayer, "Democrats Lost 2024 — But Their 'Charities' Won," Washington Examiner, September 2026.
- Ashe Short, "Tax-Deductible 'Charities' Served as Pipelines to Democrat Voter Registration: Report," Just the News, August 27, 2026.
- Tom Cotton, "Cotton to Werfel: Partisan Voter Registration Drives Violate Federal Law," U.S. Senate Press Release, October 3, 2024.
- House Oversight Committee, "Oversight Report: Lois Lerner's Role in IRS Targeting," March 11, 2014.
- House Oversight Committee, "Bipartisan House Vote Finds IRS Targeting Scandal Figure Lois Lerner in Criminal Contempt," May 7, 2014.
