What Social Science Tells Us About Forced Donor Disclosure

“Disclosure is politically attractive partly because lawmakers rarely assess its benefits or burdens.”

– Omri Ben-Shahar and Carl E. Schneider, More Than You Wanted to Know¹

The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Philanthropy Roundtable or the University of Rochester. The author maintained complete editorial control over the content of this paper.

Introduction

Mandated disclosures are omnipresent in the United States. Doctors must provide patients with HIPAA disclosures regarding the use of health histories. Members of Congress must publicly disclose details about their personal finances. It is easy to see why such policies are attractive. “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants,” wrote Justice Louis Brandeis famously.²

Yet, as Ben-Shahar and Schneider write, “‘Mandated disclosure’ may be the most common and least successful regulatory technique in American law.”³ This paper explores one form of mandated disclosure- of donors to nonprofit organizations—and assesses the benefits and costs of these types of policies.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United and a U.S. Circuit Court decision in SpeechNow, campaign finance reformers have focused their attention on disclosure as a means to regulate money in politics.⁴ The rise of super PACs which are permitted to raise and spend unlimited amounts on politics made restrictions on contributions to candidates seem ineffectual.

Reformers coined the term “dark money” to refer to the fact that nonprofits organized under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code do not have to disclose their donors publicly (though some donor information must be reported to the Internal Revenue Service).

In recent years, there have been numerous state and federal efforts to change or create disclosure rules to force the public disclosure of donors to nonprofit organizations, with particular focus on 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations (with some attention also paid to 501(c)(3) charitable organizations). And, as the states and Congress consider, and sometimes enact, changes to disclosure laws, the jurisprudence around disclosure is evolving. This is seen most notably in the major U.S. Supreme Court decision Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta (AFPF), which struck down a California rule mandating that charities reveal many of their donors to the government.⁵ The AFPF decision has spurred subsequent litigation to address questions left unanswered by the decision.

The rhetoric around forced donor disclosure is heated. For instance, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, in advocating for broadened disclosure requirements, refers to the “toxic flood of dark money” that has allowed the wealthy and interest groups to “rig the system secretly in their favor.”⁶ But, given the legislative and legal activity surrounding disclosure, it is important to move beyond such rhetoric and assess donor disclosure from a social scientific perspective, using the lens of cost-benefit analysis. This paper will show the benefits of forced donor disclosure fall far short of what its proponents claim.

The next section lays out the legal rationale for disclosure, with a focus on campaign finance disclosure (which is closely related to nonprofit disclosure). From there, it shows empirical research raises questions about the legal rationale for disclosure, focusing primarily on the purported informational benefits of disclosure. Then, it addresses the more limited empirical research on disclosure costs. Finally, it covers how one can understand disclosure laws through the lens of an economic theory known as public choice.

Why Disclosure?

In its seminal 1976 decision Buckley v. Valeo, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the potential benefits of disclosing contributors to candidate campaigns are justified on three grounds: information, anti-corruption, and enforcement.⁷ First, the Court argues for an informational benefit to disclosure. Specifically, voters will be better able to evaluate a candidate for office if they know the sources of that candidate’s contributions. Second, disclosure deters corruption and the “appearance of corruption” by “exposing large contributions and expenditures to the light of publicity.”⁸ Third, disclosure provides the information necessary to identify violations of the law.

This paper will focus on the informational benefits of disclosure requirements for three reasons. First, the enforcement rationale was heavily weakened in AFPF, where the court said “mere administrative convenience” could not justify the disclosure requirement under review in that case.⁹ What’s more, “disclosure’s benefits to enforcement of campaign finance violations have received little scholarly attention,” and the focus of this paper is scientific evidence.¹⁰ Second, recent research, including my own, has clearly established that campaign finance laws have minimal effects on trust in government, a concept closely tied to “the appearance of corruption.”¹¹ Research on actual corruption is more limited because it is so difficult to measure.

Third, the informational benefits of campaign finance disclosure laws have yet to be scrutinized in meaningful ways by legislatures or courts. In fact, disclosure was held up in Citizens United as a bulwark for elections: “[T]ransparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”¹² This makes the focus on the informational benefits particularly timely and important.

The informational rationale has intuitive appeal. As the Buckley decision notes, “Disclosure provides the electorate with information. It allows voters to place each candidate in the political spectrum more precisely than is often possible solely on the basis of party labels and campaign speeches.”¹³ In fact, political scientists have used campaign contribution data to estimate the policy preferences of candidates for state and federal office.¹⁴

This logic has also been used to justify disclosure for spending on ballot measures (also known as citizen initiatives or ballot issues). The informational justification for donor disclosure in these campaigns is that this data serves as a ‘cue’ on how to vote. If a voter is aware of a donor’s views on an issue and knows that donor has contributed to one side of a ballot measure, the voter can use this information as a shortcut for determining his position.

To give an example: If a pro-regulation environmentalist learns the ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, known for its environmental advocacy, has contributed money to support a ballot measure in California related to the environment, the voter can use this information to vote “yes.”

In Arizona, nonprofits are now effectively forced to disclose donors if they wish to engage in policy-related speech during key periods of the legislative session in election years.

Nonprofit organizations permitted to contribute to candidate or ballot measure campaigns are subject to the same disclosure rules as other contributors. These organizations, however, sometimes engage in spending related to policymaking directly out of their own funds or by giving to other organizations that then engage in such spending. Policymakers are increasingly trying to target this behavior by requiring the disclosure of donors to nonprofits. As a result, nonprofits are being drawn further into the orbit of campaign finance disclosure rules, often by stretching the definition of what constitutes campaign spending.

For instance, in 2022 Arizona voters approved Proposition 211, dubbed the “Voters’ Right to Know Act.” This wide-ranging disclosure law defines “campaign media spending” very broadly to include “a public communication that refers to a clearly identified candidate within ninety days before a primary election until the time of the general election and that is disseminated in the jurisdiction where the candidate’s election is taking place.”¹⁵ Nonprofits spending more than $50,000 on media referring to statewide candidates (including tangentially related spending such as polling) must disclose the name, address, occupation, and employer of all donors giving more than $5,000 to the nonprofit.¹⁶

New Mexico enacted a law with similar provisions in 2019, and in 2023 Minnesota expanded disclosure rules to include a “reasonable person” standard for judging whether an ad requires disclosure as advocating for the election or defeat of a candidate, which is likely to have an effect similar to the broadened definition of campaign spending in Arizona.¹⁷ ¹⁸

In Arizona, nonprofits are now effectively forced to disclose donors if they wish to engage in policy related speech during key periods of the legislative session in election years. For instance, in 2022 the primary election for governor in Arizona was held on August 2. Had the ninety-day rule been in effect then, a nonprofit could not have run extensive statewide ads commenting on the governor’s legislative agenda— at least not without disclosing all donors to the nonprofit or deleting all references to the governor—for much of the legislative session, which ended on June 25. In other words, at precisely the time when important legislative action is occurring, nonprofits are constrained in how they can discuss important legislation.

Why is this necessary? According to the supporters of Voters’ Right to Know, “As voters consider the many paid political messages seeking to influence their votes, they must be able to properly judge each message’s credibility,” necessitating disclosure laws that “give voters access to the information they need to represent their own interests at the ballot box.”¹⁹

The Act itself reads, “This act is intended to protect and promote rights and interests guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and also protected by the Arizona Constitution, to promote self-government and ensure responsive officeholders, to prevent corruption and to assist Arizona voters in making informed election decisions by securing their right to know the source of monies used to influence Arizona elections.”²⁰

Recent state-level disclosure rules targeting nonprofits sometimes require disclosures within advertisements. In Washington state, a new law requires organizations engaged in grassroots lobbying (e.g., ads or mailers reaching out to Washington residents to encourage them to contact legislators on a piece of legislation—what might be considered campaign spending in Arizona in some cases under its new rules) to list their top five contributors over $1,000 in any mailers and advertisements.²¹ The bill’s sponsor refers to the need for “accountability” to justify these disclosure requirements for lobbying: “It is important for the public to be able to identify who paid [for certain grassroots lobbying activities].²²

At the federal level, the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act has been introduced in every Congress since the 2010 Citizens United decision. This bill would require organizations, including 501(c)(4)s, to disclose all their donors giving more than $10,000 if the organization spends $10,000 or more on “campaign-related disbursements,” which include policy-related ads that mention a candidate for federal office sixty days prior to a general election and thirty days prior to a primary election. Disclaimer requirements of the same flavor as those recently enacted in Washington state are also in the latest version of the legislation and are referred to as “Stand By Every Ad” provisions.²³

The informational rationale looms large in justifying this proposal. The DISCLOSE Act states, “Campaign finance disclosure is a narrowly tailored and minimally restrictive means to advance substantial government interests, including fostering an informed electorate capable of engaging in self- government and holding their elected officials accountable, detecting and deterring quid pro quo corruption, and identifying information necessary to enforce other campaign finance laws .”²⁴ Not coincidentally, these are the three conditions laid out by the Supreme Court in Buckley.

In a press release issued by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse accompanying the introduction of the bill in 2023, Trevor Potter of the Campaign Legal Center is quoted as saying, “Without knowing who is funding the political ads designed to sway their votes, voters are not able to fully evaluate the messages they see and make an informed decision ..”²⁵

These are just some of the proposals recently enacted or being considered at the state and federal levels. Central to all these efforts is the “right to know” and the claim that disclosure will help voters judge messages from (or supported by) nonprofits. But does disclosure have the informational benefits its supporters claim? This question takes on new resonance in light of the AFPF decision, and it is to this question that we turn now.

It is important to examine what the scholarly literature has to say about donor disclosure’s informational benefits for two reasons. From a policy evaluation perspective, we are interested in knowing whether these laws provide the promised informational benefits. If they do not, then lawmakers and others debating whether to adopt new disclosure rules or revise existing rules ought to take these findings into account.

Second, from a legal perspective, research can speak to whether the laws meet the narrow tailoring requirement set out by the Supreme Court in AFPF. In that decision, the court raised the legal standard for considering the constitutionality of disclosure laws with a change in how it reviews disclosure laws. The court continued to apply the standard known as exacting scrutiny but interpreted this standard as requiring that “a government-mandated disclosure regime be narrowly tailored to the government’s asserted interest.”²⁶

Mayer says this “subtle” change will result in a “higher bar” for disclosure laws to withstand constitutional scrutiny.²⁷ Research regarding the effectiveness of disclosure laws will assist the legal community in assessing whether these laws are, in fact, narrowly tailored to the interest of the government in providing an informational benefit to voters and citizens.

The focus here will be on what the literature says about disclosure in campaign finance (broadly defined). This is appropriate because, as noted earlier, policy-focused nonprofits are increasingly falling under the authority of campaign finance laws.

Does Campaign Finance Disclosure Improve Voter Knowledge and Decision Making?

The informational benefits of campaign finance disclosure are at their heart about cues. The value of knowing who funded a particular ad or who contributes to a particular nonprofit is thought to lie in the valuable “shortcuts” disclosure provides for decision making. These shortcuts are valuable because citizens have an incentive to remain “rationally ignorant” about politics.²⁸ Gathering information about policies is costly, and voters are likely to economize given their likelihood of affecting a policy or election outcome is close to zero.

A powerful cue in candidate elections is party identification. A voter who knows nothing else about a candidate besides her party ID will be able to make inferences about that candidate’s policy preferences based on whether she is a Democrat or a Republican. This type of cue arguably has become more valuable as the parties have polarized. As discussed in the introduction, the Supreme Court has opined that cues from campaign finance disclosures might enhance or even replace party identification for voters in assessing candidate positions.

For instance, if a voter knows that group X supports candidate Y, and if the voter generally agrees with group X on issues, then the voter may choose to cast a ballot for candidate Y without knowing anything else about the candidate. This could be particularly useful in primary elections where the party cue is not useful.

Donor disclosure is also theorized to provide valuable cues to voters in non-candidate elections such as those regarding a ballot measure. (See the Ben & Jerry’s example discussed earlier.) In a seminal study, Lupia showed that knowing the positions of trial lawyers or the insurance industry on California ballot measures related to insurance reform led otherwise relatively uninformed voters to vote like their better-informed counterparts.²⁹

In both candidate and ballot measure campaigns, then, knowing which groups or donors support a particular candidate or position allows voters to better assess where they stand on the candidate or issue. This logic can be extended to disclosure by nonprofits. Knowing who is funding a grassroots lobbying campaign, or who is funding policy-related speech, provides a cue about how a voter should feel about the underlying issue.

But do these cues actually have a meaningful effect on the informational environment, and for whom? To say disclosure is informative requires us to ask, compared to what? Disclosure data is only relevant if it provides additional information about an issue or candidate beyond what is already available to voters, and if that information is pivotal in a voter’s calculus (i.e., leads them to draw meaningfully different conclusions about a candidate or issue).

In a 2013 paper, I developed a theory focused on information at the margin in campaign finance disclosure.³⁰ The logic is simple. In an informational vacuum, a single piece of data about a candidate might have a huge effect on a voter’s assessment of the candidate. But as more information is gathered or available, the marginal effect of an additional piece of information declines.

In the modern world, individuals who seek information about the positions of politicians, or about the consequences of a ballot measure, will not have to look far to acquire such information. Candidates issue public statements and are endorsed by parties, other politicians, interest groups, and even celebrities.

In the modern world, individuals who seek information about the positions of politicians, or about the consequences of a ballot measure, will not have to look far to acquire such information. Candidates issue public statements and are endorsed by parties, other politicians, interest groups, and even celebrities.

Ballot measures are often discussed in voter guides containing pro and con positions, and like candidates, they are endorsed or opposed publicly, including by parties, politicians, and interest groups. More generally, in today’s information-rich world, there is virtually no issue or election on which a voter cannot become well-informed with minimal work. In such an informational environment, then, mandated donor disclosure adds little value at the margin.

In my 2013 paper, I conducted a survey experiment to test this claim. Depending on the treatment, the first group had access to no information about a ballot measure besides a brief description, a second group had access to voter guides and news articles in addition to the brief description, and a third group had access to all the information just described plus disclosure information embedded in news articles.

These respondents were then asked to identify the positions of interest groups on the ballot measure. Respondents in the treatment group with access to the disclosure information, unsurprisingly given my theory, did no better than respondents without access to such information in identifying those positions.

Let us return briefly to the Lupia study. Lupia’s study was not focused on campaign finance disclosure and instead was focused simply on whether voters were aware of the position of trial lawyers or the insurance industry on a ballot measure. It strains credulity to think the positions of these groups would be unknown without campaign finance disclosure information.

Recent research bolsters my information at the margin theory. In a 2023 article, Robinson uses a cutting-edge experimental technique known as conjoint analysis to show when a realistic political environment is created (i.e., one with multiple sources of information about a candidate or ballot measure election), there is “little evidence that campaign finance information has a distinct impact on vote choice conditional on other highly-salient cues [such as party ID].”³¹

One exception: having a majority of donors from within the state improves perceptions of the candidate or ballot measure position. Crucially, this information is not about the identity of donors. Put another way: Robinson finds no evidence that personally identifying information about a donor affects voter decision making.

To see why it is important to study effects at the margin, consider a recent study by Boudreau and MacKenzie.³² They find that when given no other information about who is in favor or opposed to a ballot measure except for campaign finance disclosure information, high- knowledge voters act on donor disclosure cues. But this is an artificial environment that does not account for the fact that these voters are likely to also access other sorts of information about the ballot measure (such as party endorsements or a voter guide).

The research discussed thus far shows disclosure cues, at best, work in highly artificial environments. But even in those conditions, cues do not work for everyone. Boudreau and Mackenzie find cues can backfire on low-information voters who are not able to make use of donor disclosure cues because they lack the political knowledge base to do so. The result: they sometimes end up voting against their interests. This is not a surprising finding given earlier research in this area. In the early 2000s, Lau and Redlawsk found political novices misused cues, and Kukliniski and Quirk noted cues are not likely to be effective for the ill-informed.³³ This is ironic because better-informed voters are less likely to need cues to begin with!

But it gets worse. Recent research suggests interest group cues may lead voters of all knowledge levels, not just low-information voters, to make mistakes relative to their preferences. Using survey experiments, Broockman et al. identify a phenomenon they term “heuristic projection,” whereby voters in candidate elections assume interest groups they are unfamiliar with agree with them.³⁴ They give the following motivating example:

In the traditional view, when a pro- redistribution citizen learns that Americans for Prosperity has given her representative a 100 percent rating, she becomes less supportive of that representative because she now thinks her representative opposes redistribution or, at the worst, disregards the information if she cannot interpret it. To the extent heuristic projection operates in the real world, she would rather become more supportive of her representative because she now thinks her representative also supports redistribution.³⁵

Using a survey experiment, the authors find voters do engage in heuristic projection, and politically knowledgeable voters are also prone to such errors. As Broockman et al. put it, “Our results, therefore, raise doubt about widely-shared hopes that interest group cues would improve accountability.”³⁶

To sum up, no systematic body of peer- reviewed research establishes that donor disclosure information improves voter knowledge at the margin, and there is reason to believe disclosure-related cues (among others) might lead voters to make incorrect (relative to their preferences) evaluations of a candidate or ballot measure.

Does Disclosure Distort the Informational Environment for Voters?

Thus far, I have established that disclosure information is of limited utility—and may even be counterproductive-in an information- rich environment encountered in modern campaigns (including issue campaigns nonprofits may be involved with). But “Stand By Every Ad” disclaimers, which require donor disclosure information to be embedded within ads, raise a second consideration: does disclosure distort the informational environment by privileging some types of information over others? Or, as Wood puts it in a 2018 review of the literature, “Disclosure may focus voters’ attention in the wrong place, away from first-order information about policy and candidates (Karlan 2012).”³⁷

Several researchers have studied this aspect of disclosure. Dowling and Wichowsky show in a survey experiment that advertisements listing the top five donors to the organization running an attack ad against a candidate reduces the effectiveness of the ad.³⁸ In the ballot measure context, Lesenyie shows in a survey experiment that voters reduce support for a proposition when a corporate donor is listed as the major funder for an ad sponsored by another organization.³⁹

In a less direct test, because the environment was not an advertisement but instead a description of an election, Rhodes et al. find in a survey experiment that describing a group which keeps its donors private as a “dark money” group reduces support for the candidate that group views favorably (though this effect is mitigated by partisan cues).⁴⁰ Rhodes et al. conclude these results “might be enough for reformers, if the goal is to see some backlash against [candidates benefiting from ‘dark money’].”⁴¹

Backlash toward organizations, however, is not listed by the Supreme Court as a constitutionally permissible rationale for disclosure laws. And making ads less effective is arguably a distortion of the informational environment of elections and policymaking. As these disclaimer policies grow in popularity, it is important that further research be done on the distortionary effects of such policies.

Having established what the social science literature says about disclosure’s benefits, I now turn to its costs. As the court noted in AFPF, for disclosure rules to be constitutionally permissible, “the strength of the governmental interest must reflect the seriousness of the actual burden on First Amendment rights.”⁴² The two main burdens associated with disclosure requirements are administrative costs and the “chilling” of speech. Administrative burdens come in the form of record keeping and compliance with often Byzantine rules. For instance, to avoid disclosing all donors, organizations sometimes must create segregated accounts for political purposes.

The chilling of speech arises when donors are hesitant to give because they fear reprisals or harassment from friends, family members, coworkers, the government, or internet mobs. Chilling may also occur due to a desire to maintain the privacy of one’s giving or policy views. Privacy and harassment are, of course, closely related. In its seminal 1958 decision NAACP v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the government cannot require groups (in the case, the NAACP) to disclose their membership list without a compelling state interest that outweighs privacy considerations—privacy considerations tied to fears of reprisal.⁴³

Statistical research in both areas- administrative costs and chilled speech-is particularly challenging to carry out, in part because of the challenges of measurement and data gathering. For instance, we do not observe non-contributions, and we do not observe which groups fail to form because of administrative burdens. There is almost no peer- reviewed research on administrative burdens. There is, however, a small but important literature on the “chilling” effects of disclosure centered on privacy and harassment.

In a survey, Carpenter found almost 60 percent of respondents would think twice about contributing to a ballot measure campaign if their personal information were to be disclosed.⁴⁴ Of those who would hesitate, over 60 percent expressed their desire to remain anonymous (i.e., maintain their privacy), with comments like “Because I do not think it is anybody’s business what I donate and who I give it to.”⁴⁵ Others raised concerns about harassment.

In a survey experiment conduct by La Raja, individuals informed their personal information would be disclosed upon making a contribution to a candidate were more likely to say they would give less or not at all, especially if they were at odds politically with neighbors, friends, and co-workers.⁴⁶ La Raja notes how the internet may be driving this effect to some degree: “For citizens who value a degree of privacy in making political choices, the internet may compel them to draw upon reserves of civic courage to a greater extent than previously if they choose to engage in politics.”⁴⁷

In a field experiment conducted by Perez- Truglia and Cruces, individuals provided with information about the contribution behavior of neighbors were less likely to contribute to a candidate if their political persuasion differed from that of their neighbors: “Our evidence suggests that public disclosure could have the unintended effect of facilitating social pressure.”⁴⁸

Oklobdzija provides suggestive evidence using data about a “dark money” group forced to reveal its donors after a change in state law and a subsequent lawsuit. The author finds donors to a “dark money” group supporting a conservative proposition are much more liberal than their counterparts who contributed to a group disclosing its donors.⁴⁹ His assessment is these donors “may have simultaneously feared backlash against their businesses or their reputations.”⁵⁰

In my 2020 book, which focuses on a nationally representative set of surveys my coauthor Jeff Milyo and I conducted, we designed a survey experiment asking about campaign finance disclosure.⁵¹ Half the respondents were asked whether they support the disclosure of contributions generally. The other half were asked whether they support the disclosure of their own contributions. This design allows us to determine how harassment and privacy concerns affect views about disclosure.

We find “support for all forms of disclosure plummets when the question wording shifts from the ‘for thee’ to the ‘for me’ treatment, in some cases declining by half. Asking about one’s own contributions personalizes the issue and highlights the risks associated with disclosure.”⁵²

It is easy to see how these results extend to nonprofit giving. For instance, on the issue of abortion, in a liberal community liberal opponents of abortion rights would be less likely to give to an anti-abortion-rights group if they knew their donations would be made public. Likewise, in a conservative community, conservative supporters of abortion rights would be less likely to give to a pro-abortion-rights group if they knew their donations would be made public.

And, returning to NAACP v. Alabama, Morris finds that from 1955 to 1957, NAACP membership in southern states plummeted from 128,716 to 79,677.⁵³ The disclosure requirements at the heart of the NAACP v. Alabama case almost surely drove part of this decline.

Further research is necessary in this area to better understand the “chilling” effects of disclosure for nonprofit organizations. The next step for researchers working on disclosure costs should be to better understand, using an experimental design, the role privacy and harassment considerations play in attitudes toward giving and disclosure, and whether these attitudes differ depending on the nature of the giving (e.g., giving to candidate campaigns vs. nonprofit giving).

The Challenge of Disclosure Rule Design

As a political economist, I believe it is necessary to conclude this paper with an important caveat. The analysis presented thus far takes disclosure laws as given, but it is also vital to understand the motivations of rule designers.

A theory of political economy known as public choice theory uses the tools of economics, with its foundation in understanding incentives, to study political decision making. This lens is useful for understanding the motivation behind disclosure rules. Disclosure rules are a product of the political processes they seek to regulate, and a public choice analysis suggests these rules may be designed to serve the interests of those proposing the rules.

For instance, a director of Clean Elections Minnesota wrote that disclosure laws should apply to politically engaged 501(c)(4) organizations because they are different than “nonprofits like the Sierra Club, or a scientific society or a firefighter organization. That is, groups devoted to public service, not politics.”⁵⁴ On November 7, 2023, the headline on the Sierra’s Club’s main webpage read, “Together, we can help deepen the movement for a livable planet, safe communities, and a democracy that works for everyone,” alongside a picture featuring protestors holding signs such as “Voting Is Climate Action.”⁵⁵

The Sierra Club is clearly engaged with politics, so the desire to exempt it from a law seems tied to an assessment of its policy goals. In other words, supporters of disclosure laws seem to be targeting certain kinds of political speech-speech that is not “public service” as they define it.

These are not outlier views among reformers. For instance, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, in advocating for stronger disclosure laws, argues, “A torrent of dark money spending has for too long prevented Congress from pursuing solutions that are overwhelmingly supported by the public.”⁵⁶ In other words, disclosure laws are needed to get the “correct” policies enacted. Although disclosure laws are framed as designed to provide informational benefits, it appears another goal is to move substantive policies in the direction reformers prefer.

Conclusion

This paper has shown, using state- of-the-art social science research, that campaign finance disclosure is a policy failure. The literature has identified few positive informational benefits of disclosure and has even identified cases where donor disclosure deceives voters. Meanwhile, there is evidence disclosures impose costs on organizations and individuals, potentially chilling speech.

Although the bulk of the literature on disclosure is focused on donors to candidate and ballot measure campaigns, nonprofits are increasingly becoming a target of reformers and policymakers, often by expanding the scope of what constitutes behavior subject to donor disclosure. This makes the research discussed in this paper all the more important for those interested in the role of nonprofits in society. Courts, legislatures, and policymakers should take these findings, along with the public choice scholarship on policymaking discussed in the previous section, into account as they assess the merits of current and proposed disclosure requirements.

What Social Science Tells Us About Forced Donor Disclosure

Introduction

Why Disclosure?

What the Social Scientific Literature Says About Disclosure’s Informational Benefits

Does Campaign Finance Disclosure Improve Voter Knowledge and Decision Making?

Does Disclosure Distort the Informational Environment for Voters?

What the Social Science Literature Says About Disclosure’s Costs

The Challenge of Disclosure Rule Design

Conclusion

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What Social Science Tells Us About Forced Donor Disclosure