JASON SNEAD: States Made 2025 A Year Of Victories For Honest Elections

JASON SNEAD: States Made 2025 A Year Of Victories For Honest Elections

by | Sep 5, 2025 | Opinion

By Jason Snead |

Nothing undermines confidence in elections quite like discovering they can be compromised by foreign billionaires or botched altogether through complex schemes like ranked-choice voting.

This year, legislatures across the country took aim at both of these urgent threats to election integrity, as outlined by a recent report from Honest Elections Project. Altogether, eight states closed a critical legal loophole allowing foreign billionaires to flood ballot measure campaigns with foreign dark money. Meanwhile, six more states banned ranked-choice voting, the most legislative bans in a single year. In other words, conservative states have made 2025 a banner year for election reform.

Most Americans would be shocked to learn how vulnerable our elections are to foreign influence. Federal law forbids foreign nationals from donating to candidates or political parties yet offers no such protection for state or local ballot measures. This means that a foreign billionaire cannot influence a particular race, but he can spend millions to pass a constitutional amendment that rewrites the rules of the entire election system.

That loophole has been a gift to Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss. According to the watchdog group Americans for Public Trust, Wyss has directed roughly $280 million into the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which has simultaneously spent more than $130 million in foreign-tied funds into ballot campaigns in 26 states. As shocking as these figures are, they likely represent the tip of the iceberg. After all, the same loophole can just as easily be abused by foreign nationals doing the bidding of China and Russia.

Fortunately, conservative states are taking action to ensure that ballot measures are no longer a Trojan Horse for foreign interference. After Ohio led the way in 2024, eight states this year—Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wyoming—enacted new laws to ban foreign nationals and the groups they finance from funding ballot measure campaigns. Even Kentucky’s Democratic governor signed the bill into law, proof that defending elections from foreign influence should not be a partisan proposition.

That hasn’t stopped many on the left from fighting to keep these loopholes open for purely partisan gain. Marc Elias, Democrats’ top election lawyer, went to court in Ohio in 2024 and again in Kansas this year to block these bans. He lost both times, once in front of an Obama-appointed judge. States clearly have the authority to ban foreign funding, and every state should.

The same is true of ranked-choice voting, and 2025 was an incredible year in the ongoing fight to stop its spread.

Under ranked-choice voting, voters are asked to rank multiple candidates. Ballots are counted in rounds as losing candidates are eliminated and votes are redistributed. If a voter fails to rank enough candidates, the ballot is “exhausted” and thrown out. Candidates can win the most first-place votes but lose the election. Delays are inevitable; Alaska’s ranked-choice voting tabulation does not even begin until 15 days after Election Day. In California, a tabulation error once led to the wrong candidate being certified. Ranked-choice voting turns what should be a straightforward election into a complicated black box.

Fortunately, the public has seen the problems with this system from the start. In 2024, ranked-choice voting advocates spent nearly $100 million dollars on ballot measures promoting the scheme in six states. All failed. Only the District of Columbia adopted it, which is hardly a ringing endorsement.

Between 2022 and 2024, 11 states banned ranked-choice voting. And this year, six more – Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming – acted to make the scheme illegal. And in Utah, lawmakers allowed a failed pilot program to expire, meaning ranked-choice voting will come to an end there, too.

As extraordinary as this progress is, conservatives must not become complacent. States like Michigan, Florida, Nebraska, North Carolina, Montana, and Arizona have all seen significant amounts of foreign-tied money pumped into ballot issue campaigns, but so far have not acted. And progressives remain committed to pushing ranked-choice voting, especially after witnessing the scheme elevate a Democratic Socialist in New York. Ranked-choice voting lobbyists are working legislatures nationwide, and activists are already gathering signatures for another ballot measure in the presidential battleground of Michigan.

That should serve as a warning. When it comes to securing our elections, the job is never done. This was a banner year for election integrity. Conservative leaders must keep the momentum going in 2026 and beyond.

Daily Caller News Foundation logo

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Jason Snead is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and the Executive Director of Honest Elections Project Action.

Arizona Among States Worried Banking Industry Being Used As Pawn Against Law-Abiding Energy Companies

Arizona Among States Worried Banking Industry Being Used As Pawn Against Law-Abiding Energy Companies

by | Nov 25, 2021 | Economy, News

By Terri Jo Neff |

A partisan effort to make it harder for fossil fuel-based energy companies to obtain bank financing and banking services prompted a warning letter to the U.S. banking industry on Nov. 22 from the top financial officers of several states, including Arizona.

“Denying banking services to traditional, reliable energy production industries simply to advance radical, socialist policies from the White House, is both immoral and goes against the very free market principles that our country was founded upon,” said Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee in announcing the letter. “In this case, they are picking the energy industry as the losers and that goes against the free marketplace in America.”

Yee joined the financial officers of Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming in signing the letter, cautioning the banking industry of potential consequences for allowing itself to be used as a political pawn against law-abiding companies in the coal, oil, and natural gas industries.

According to the letter, the Biden Administration is “pressuring U.S. banks and financial institutions to limit, encumber, or outright refuse financing for traditional energy production companies.” The White House is also supporting an end to American financial support for traditional energy production projects in developing countries around the world, “likely ceding future development and exploration to Chinese interests,” the letter states.

“We believe, as almost all Americans do, that the free market should remain free and not be manipulated to advance social agendas,” the letter states. “We are not asking for special treatment of the fossil fuel industries. To the contrary, we simply want financial institutions to assess fossil fuel businesses as other legal businesses – without prejudice or preference.”

The letter also says the states have a compelling government interest “to select financial institutions that are not engaged in tactics to harm the very people whose money they are handling.”

Each state will undertake its own actions to counter the “undue pressure” being placed on the banking industry, according to the letter. Yee has not outlined what steps her office might take if financial institutions which do business with the state engage in efforts to deny services to the energy industry.

Arizona Joins Coalition To Defend Second Amendment Before Ninth Circuit

Arizona Joins Coalition To Defend Second Amendment Before Ninth Circuit

by | Apr 4, 2021 | News

Arizona has joined a coalition of 22 states before the Ninth Circuit defending the Second Amendment rights of American citizens. The states are asking the court to declare California’s law limiting magazine capacities as unconstitutional.

Arizona, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming are filing a legal brief at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Duncan v. Rodriquez – a challenge of California’s unconstitutional ban on extremely common magazines for firearms.

In the amicus brief, the states’ attorneys general note that California Penal Code 32310 violates the Second Amendment: “This Court, therefore, should not apply a balancing approach – like strict scrutiny or intermediate scrutiny – to a ban on arms commonly used by law abiding citizens for lawful purposes. Such an approach would be inconsistent with the decisions of the Supreme Court in Heller, McDonald, and Caetano.”

“The enumerated right to bear arms reflected in the Second Amendment is fundamental and predates the Bill of Rights. The right is important to millions of Americans, including many of our most vulnerable citizens living in disadvantaged communities. The arms at issue in these proceedings are commonly used by millions of law-abiding citizens for a myriad of lawful purposes,” added the attorneys general.