I tried posting this in the r/politicaldiscussion but it was flagged as too long - and yet I feel like the only way to have an informed discussion on these things is to know their history and relationship to each other. If you already know this stuff you can hop right on down and start discussing, I have a lot of questions that I'd love to see discussed because I feel a genuine discussion on these organizations is not really being had. If you have any additional information that I didn't include please feel free to share it in the comments below, believe it or not I tried to keep this short. In this writing I primarily address the charity organizations of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), State Policy Network (SPN), and the State Innovation Exchange (SiX). However, the organizations of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and the Democracy Alliance (DA) are also discussed and relevant here as well. (Edit: I'm not sure if my tag for this post is appropriate, first time posting here and it seemed the best one, maybe it would've been better without a tag?)

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

ALEC is a powerful nonprofit charity organization that has a record of getting model bills passed into state laws across the country. ALEC was organized in the 1970s with the goal to help benefit the conservative agenda in the United States. ALEC has come under scrutiny and criticism for sharing a lot of qualities with lobbying but calling itself a charity. It is unique in the sense that state lawmakers can anonymously join ALEC for a flat fee (Around $100 or so) and a few times a year the organization puts on events for these lawmakers. At these events a lot of private meetings are held where no press is allowed and no public records of what happens in these meetings. In these meetings policies written by think tanks or other legislators are often encouraged to be brought back to their home state to introduce as a bill. This was the case in the "Stand Your Ground" law that was used in George Zimmerman's defense on killing Trayvon Martin in 2012 in Florida, the law is one example of a "model bill" created by ALEC. How a "model bill" is decided is a sort of public-private quasi-democracy that is done through a series of private meetings and private votes with corporations/lobbyists and legislators where everyone has an equal vote, public and private members alike. For an example of scope in 2011 - 2012 132 ALEC model bills were introduced in at least 39 states, 90% of which were introduced by Republicans, ALEC's influence has only increased since then. In the case of the "Stand Your Ground" law this was first promoted by an NRA lobbyist through ALEC and then adopted by about a dozen states. While this connection of the "Stand Your Ground" law did get some corporate members to leave ALEC, it is still a hugely influential organization where hundreds of more bills have been introduced since - almost verbatim to the ALEC model bills - across the country on a variety of traditional conservative issues (including climate denial, right to work, deregulation, and donor privacy). And the only reason we know most of these details are because of leaked documents, not the work of ALEC being transparent.

The concern that ALEC is a lobbying organization led to whistle blowers sharing private ALEC material with the watchdog organization Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) to begin tracking the organization more closely and created a website called ALEC Exposed. Bill Moyer worked with CMD to create a short documentary entitled The United States of ALEC where some of the inner-workings of ALEC were exposed that were not publicly known beforehand. CMD was also behind organizing a complaint to the IRS in 2015 that their nonprofit status as a 501(c)(3) should be revoked because they are hosting events with free gifts to legislators that do not have to be told to the public in exchange to promote ALEC model bills in their home state. Donations to 501(c)(3)'s are tax deductible and considered charitable organizations. Since then ALEC has responded to this criticism by creating another nonprofit arm that is 501(c)(4) which is for "social welfare purposes" but whose donations are not tax deductible. According to this NPR interview parts of the NFL are considered 501(c)(3)s and to have both a (c)(3) and (c)(4) arm in one organization is standard behavior for many organizations, one spokesperson for ALEC in the NPR interview described it as "just like Planned Parenthood" who has both a (c)(3) and a (c)(4) as well. To be clear, it is unlikely ALEC is doing anything illegal and as far as the proponents of ALEC are concerned their organization is an example of how American democracy in action should work. Scott Walker is just one of many well-known ALEC members that helped pass many ALEC model bills in Wisconsin.

In 2019 ALEC held a redistricting summit which included panelists that have helped conservatives win seats since the 2010 election cycle but have been accused of gerrymandering. One recording from a meeting included panelist and ex-Georgia legislator Lynn Westmoreland, who co-chaired the 2010 redistricting initiative REDMAP, which essentially gerrymandered districts to eliminate minority influence from elections. Speaking as a panelist for a private ALEC event Westmoreland shared a story of how he got black Democrats to draw their "perfect district," which they used to increase the number of whiter and more Republican districts. However, for most Americans the above information is not common knowledge, even if they have followed the high-profile incident of the Stand Your Ground law.

State Policy Network (SPN)

What is even lesser known about ALEC is its association with SPN, another 501(c)(3) charity organization that allows for tax deductions for donations, this connection to a giant think tank powerhouse is something that Planned Parenthood doesn't have that ALEC does. SPN is the umbrella organization for about 162 conservative think tanks in all 50 states as well as Canada and the UK. Their focus primarily is to "promote a public policy from a framework of limited government." Many/Most well known conservative/libertarian think tanks are a part of SPN including the Manhattan Institute, the Heartland Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Pioneer Institute, and the Cato Institute. ALEC is also an associate member of SPN for what it's worth. One of the most well-known and most powerful think-tanks of SPN is the Heritage Foundation, which was co-founded by Paul Weyrich, who also co-founded ALEC. SPN was founded in 1992 by Thomas Roe, who was a board member of The Heritage Foundation.

Due to these close ties with ALEC, CMD has also been tracking the relationship these SPN think-tanks and their role in ALEC model bills (PDF warning for that link). Interesting to note is that despite SPN having the same president over the last 20 years - Tracie Sharp - she does not have her own Wikipedia page. Under Sharp, SPN has gone from having influence in 34 states with a revenue of about a quarter-of-a-million dollars to having multiple think tanks in almost every state as well as internationally with a revenue of about $16 million, possibly more than ALEC. Sharp was captured speaking privately to members at a meeting that SPN worked like "IKEA" "providing raw materials and services" to assemble the "products," presumably what would shape the model bills for ALEC so that they can be ushered into multiple states as laws.

Described this way SPN seems to be where ideas are generated on a variety of coordinated topics that will be at the ready for when it comes to time to write policy in ALEC's private conditions. Let's take a current event like the murder of George Floyd and look how SPN operated in this situation. Heather Mac Donald, who is a member of the SPN's Manhattan Institute, wrote an Opinion article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "The Myth of Systemic Police Racism" that was widely shared among those who did not agree with the Black Lives Matter agenda and wanted to support the work of police officers. Mac Donald has already published several books about police - like The War on Cops (that is a link to a very positive review by the fellow SPN think-tank The Heritage Foundation, which happens to be the top Google result when you search for a review of the book) and topics on race such as The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture (that is another positive review from another SPN think tank - the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal - neither think tank acknowledges that both being a part of SPN with Mac Donald is a conflict of interest). While Mac Donald's qualifications to make these claims and quality and the rigor of her claims can be debated the clear indication is that because she is a member of the Manhattan Institute SPN can use her writing as the "raw material" for justification for policies put forth by ALEC on model bills. Whether or not they will use Mac Donald's claims and justifications to push ALEC model bill policy is another story. For now Mac Donald is there building influence while the leaders of ALEC decide whether they will use her work, if at all, to determine policy. This is how SPN functions to serve ALEC through its vast think tank membership. Both SPN and ALEC are flush with corporate funding from the likes of Facebook, AT&T, and Comcast (among many more) with one of the largest contributors being the controversial Koch network.

Currently a shared goal between SPN and ALEC is that "Transparency is for the government; privacy is for people." In essence, organizations like ALEC and SPN and who funds them should remain private so that they do not have to be harassed for funding things they believe in. They use examples like that of Margie Christofferson, a restaurant manager who donated $100 for the controversial Prop 8 campaign in California back in 2009, and the restaurant she managed was then boycotted by gay rights activists, leading her to resign due to dropping business. This only happened to Margie because California's secretary of state published a list of contributors, thus making the funders of the proposition transparent. SPN and ALEC actively promote that average people should be able to fund public initiatives without being publicly identified as supporters of them for their own protection so they don't feel compelled to resign from their job because they support unpopular legislation. Of course, this protection would also go to multi-million and multi-billion dollar individuals and corporations. In this way SPN and ALEC supported the Supreme Court's controversial 2010 Citizen's United decision which follows along this same belief that private corporations and individuals should not have to disclose what initiatives they're funding or supporting in the government. As concerns of foreign interference in America's elections grow funding policies like these that ALEC and SPN support do not discuss how or whether if at all this should be addressed even in the face of the American Intelligence Community expressing concern.

State Innovation Exchange (SiX)

The answer to the question of whether there is then a liberal counterbalance to the SPN/ALEC think-tank-to-state-law-pipeline is not really. While one representative of ALEC mentioned that Planned Parenthood operates similarly as a nonprofit, Planned Parenthood does not charge lawmakers to become undisclosed members, hosts some of the most powerful business leaders in the world and have secret meetings with them to establish bills, and they are not directly connected to an organization that holds a series of liberal think tanks that work together to write and promote each other's ideas. Watchdog organizations like CMD - which is one of the only reasons we know the things we do about ALEC and SPN - are considered progressive and liberal for the mere action of attempting to shed light on this fast-lane process that many of our state laws go through. It would seem SPN/ALEC would prefer organizations like CMD to only be focused on keeping information transparent after it has passed into the world of public laws, without knowing fully who might be benefiting or who supported the new law. But whatever CMD is, it is not a counterbalance structure to SPN/ALEC for the same reasons Planned Parenthood is not a counterbalance. Conservatives have built an exclusive centralized network that bridges ideas to ready-to-be-implemented model bills that are secretly decided by its undisclosed legislative and private members, many of which are some of the most powerful and wealthy individuals and businesses in the country, if not the world. Liberals do not have a mirror model to this conservative machine and Democrats have paid the price at the polls. The SPN/ALEC machine is efficient and successful in a way liberals cannot match but that alone does not make it a bad thing.

The closest counterbalance that liberals have to the SPN/ALEC model is SiX, founded in 2014 by President Obama's liason to the states, Nick Rathod. Prior to 2014 several smaller less successful initiatives worked independently to try and respond to the conservative SPN/ALEC model but SiX breathed new life into them and has since become a more successful and centralized organization. Like ALEC, SiX has a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4) and its nearly 30 employees send information to more than 3,000 state legislatures or staffers. But its $6.5 million budget is only about half of that of ALEC, and a little less than a 1/3 of SPN's budget, let alone the fact that SPN and ALEC work in conjunction with one another. SiX tries to set itself apart from ALEC with different aims from them with a focus on strengthening democracy and advocating for working families, reproductive rights, civil rights, and protecting the environment. SiX proclaims that they are not a liberal version of ALEC, "We're better" it states on their FAQ. They claim they're better because they don't take corporate funding but they do take money from the Democracy Alliance which is a wealthy liberal organization that includes billionaires like George Soros and Tom Steyer. The Democracy Alliance and SiX therefore utilize and benefit from the "dark money" of Citizens United just like SPN and ALEC.

SiX has worked to support state legislation that helps refugees, protects immigrants, insists on publicly released presidential tax returns, promotes health care benefits including paid sick leave, supports equal pay and raising the minimum wage, is pro-choice, and expands the right to vote among other things (PDF Warning). They differentiate themselves from ALEC by claiming that they provide resources for a state legislator to make informed decisions and do not make them pay to get the benefits of their services. But like ALEC they support many state bills and help to get them through legislation. One success they had was on the 173 year old ban on abortion in Massachusetts that has remained on the books despite being superseded by Roe v. Wade. SiX's concern is that if the Supreme Court were to overturn the Roe decision Massachusetts would likely automatically then be anti-abortion, but after SiX's supported bill if Roe is abolished in Massachusetts abortions would be legal. That is just one example of effective legislative action driven by SiX that works in some similar ways as SPN/ALEC. However its small staff does not make it a true comparison to the conservative juggernaut. But there are similiarities in how they both are funded by undisclosed donors in a variety of ways, and they each circumvent traditional democratic processes in similar ways, although SiX tries to highlight that there are some limits on their version.

The Discussion

There are a lot of hot button issues that these three organizations deal in - whether it's on reproduction rights, racism, traditional marriage, gun rights, etc. But please keep in mind that there are many places we can go to discuss those hot-button issues, but that very little discussion is had on these organizations and their impact on the American system of democracy. If something regarding an issue helps shed light on a discussion about ALEC, SPN, and SiX then please share it, but otherwise let's stick to what it means to live in an America with these organizations having such powerful influence on our system. I think it's fair to say that all of these organizations are legal, so if you oppose something about these organizations what should change in the law? The more specific the better. I have a few questions I'd like to see discussed about these organizations including:

• How aware is the average person that much of the conservative political success in the last several decades has been to the SPN/ALEC model?
• Are there any conservatives that find anything problematic with the SPN/ALEC model? If so, what is it? If not, is there anything that could make it better?
• Is there anything wrong with having a functioning centralized system of ideas that can be translated into law like the SPN/ALEC or SiX model?
• Is it problematic that these organizations are having a more direct influence on state legislation than the average voter or are they making things more streamlined?
• Is it ethical for think tanks that are part of the same SPN network to make intentional positive reviews of other members of their network? Is there evidence of robust debate and differences within the network?
• Are there any parts of the SPN/ALEC/SiX working models that people should/shouldn't support?
• Is it democratic to not know or see who funds or writes policies that have a "non-trivial" chance of passing as state laws?
• What are your thoughts on building up momentum for federal policies by winning over each state rather than just try and implement from the federal level?
• Do watchdogs organizations like CMD have a role in our modern democracy or are they inherently political and biased and not beneficial?
• Are organizations like SPN/ALEC/SiX growing in influence because funding for bills no longer needs to partake fully in the democratic process?
• What would happen if transparency decisions changed and rulings like Citizens United were reversed, would organizations like SPN/ALEC/SiX shrink in influence?
• If we continue to allow these sorts of models influence our state laws how do we ensure foreign manipulation is not at play? Or does that no longer matter anymore under this new system or in our global society?
• Is the SPN/ALEC system or the SiX system a better model? Or are they both bad models? Or good models?
• Is there a "third" option on how all of this could be done better?
• If these sort of organizations should have less of an influence on our system, how would we go about removing them and what exactly should be done differently?
• What role should charity organizations play in our lawmaking decisions and what should qualify as a charity?
• Should these organizations be discussed more publicly by state and federal politicians?
• Is it okay for organizations like ALEC to keep their publicly elected legislative members private despite encouraging them to introduce lobbyist written bills in their home state?
• What is the level of corruption or chance of inequitable influence under these models?