Montana state Sen. Jim Peterson (R) and six other Republican legislators launched a campaign on Monday to force dark money political groups to disclose the names of their donors.
The Billings Gazette reported that the coalition will attempt to put the issue on the 2014 ballot, asking voters to decide whether groups that spend more than $10,000 on political ads in an election cycle should have to identify their donors. Peterson and his colleagues failed earlier this year to get the legislature to pass a measure that would have done just that.
“We decided we need to do something about dark money, and return the power of the election back to the people,” Peterson said at a news conference in Great Falls on Monday, according to the Gazette.
For the initiative to get on the ballot, the group will have until next June to collect 24,175 signatures from registered Montana voters as well as the support of at least 5 percent of voters in at least 34 of Montana’s 100 House districts.
Dark money groups generally use loopholes in state and federal campaign finance laws to avoid disclosing their donors and have been playing an ever-larger role in politics in recent years.
(h/t ThinkProgress)
