A fringe political group associated with Sarah Palin may have broken a string of campaign finance laws, according to a recent complaint.
Alaska lawyer Scott Kendall, of the firm Cashion Gilmore, filed the complaint against the group “Alaskans for Honest Elections" that's dedicated to ending ranked-choice voting in the state, for a dizzying array of alleged violations -- including attempts to get around disclosure laws, obscure its finances, manufacture tax breaks for donors and line their own pockets, reported The Daily Beast.
“You turn over one rock and there’s more, turn over another and there’s more there too,” Kendall said. “With the kind of simple-mindedness involved here, as an attorney it’s almost intoxicating.”
Palin blames ranked-choice voting for her congressional campaign loss last year, and she serves as national spokesperson for the group, which is funded by a "church" established in Washington state as the “Ranked Choice Education Association," and Kendall's complaint alleges the network is unlawfully using its self-declared status as a “nonprofit religious organization” to get around a requirement to register with the Alaska Public Offices Commission as a political group.
“They haven’t denied they formed a fake church, they admitted they’ve formed both of these groups as churches, and they haven’t undermined anything factual about the complaint, just broadly characterizing it as misinformation,” Kendall said. “They say it’s none of your business, but to me that’s not a defense.”
Anti-LGBTQ megachurch pastor Dr. Art Mathias is behind the groups, which appear to be subsidized by his Wellspring Ministries, and he has tried to justify RCEA's tax status with legal claims borrowed from the anti-government sovereign citizen movement.
“It’s a goofy, esoteric constitutional theory, the kind of guys who get a parking ticket and say they can only pay in gold doubloons or whatever,” Kendall said. “But if that theory were correct, then every super PAC would be a church — the Church of Romney, Church of Ted Cruz, Synagogue of Chuck Schumer. It’s not on me to question anyone’s faith, but I don’t see how ballot measures qualify as a religious cause.”