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The emotional debate over voter fraud and voter intimidation has intensified this year, fueled by tea party anger and a surge in so-called ballot security programs to challenge individual voters [...]

Republicans and their allies are vastly outspending Democrats on the air these days, but a less noticed contest could help level the midterm playing field: the ground game. Despite signs [...]

Some look at the skyrocketing cost of judicial elections, which one recent report pegs at more than $200 million over the last decade, and shrug. After all, state and federal [...]

As concerns grow over secret political spending, nonprofit groups lavishing big money on elections could find themselves playing a dangerous game. So far critics sounding the alarm over corporate-backed nonprofits, [...]

As midterm fundraising intensifies, a bizarre contest is developing between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., and Minority Leader John Boehner , R-Ohio: Who can lob the harshest ethics attacks [...]

Two and a half years after the House set up a quasi-independent panel to investigate ethics abuses, the Office of Congressional Ethics appears poised to close its doors. A Republican [...]

Having made good on its promise to throw out its old rule book in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to free up corporate and union political spending, the [...]

For American corporations testing their new freedom to spend money directly on campaigns, the backlash against donations by Target Corp. and Best Buy Co. sends a stark warning: Proceed at [...]

In the wake of court rulings that roll back limits on independent campaign expenditures, the Federal Election Commission has issued two advisory opinions that spell out just how easy it [...]

Senate Democrats have rewritten the DISCLOSE Act, their answer to the Supreme Court's ruling to free up corporate and union political spending, in a last-ditch bid to win over reluctant [...]

Updated at 9:45 a.m. National party leaders are raising hundreds of millions for a high-stakes redistricting war that will define the political playing field for the next decade. And reform [...]

When the Federal Election Commission ruled last month that the advocacy group Citizens United could skirt certain campaign finance laws by calling itself a news organization, few reporters paid much [...]

House Democrats finally won passage of the DISCLOSE Act last week, but they have little to celebrate. The bill, which sets out to shed light on corporate and interest group [...]

In a year when South Carolina deserves a prize for this election's most bizarre, vicious, topsy-turvy campaigns, the state's Democratic Party has finally shown some decency and common sense. Following [...]

Reform advocates see both dark clouds and a silver lining in the Supreme Court's recent decision to block a key provision of Arizona's public financing law. On the down side, [...]

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi first pushed her wary colleagues to set up a new investigative team to beef up ethics enforcement, some watchdogs argued against it. Since ethics investigators [...]

Critics have found a lot to hate about the so-called Disclose Act, the new campaign finance bill that congressional Democrats are pushing to enact by July 4. Business leaders and [...]

Updated at 12:11 p.m. on May 24. To hear leading conservatives tell it, the specter of book banning looms large in the United States. Book-banning fears helped convince the Supreme [...]

Senators bent on ending the logjams and secrecy that tie up the world's greatest deliberative body lost a key parliamentary fight last week, but the emotional debate over filibusters and [...]

There's been quite a buzz lately over a GOP fundraising blitz that could pull tens of millions into conservative advocacy and so-called 527 groups this year. 'This is the first [...]

Disclosure has become ground zero in the campaign finance wars now that the Supreme Court has lifted restrictions on political spending by corporations, unions and activist groups. The intensifying debate [...]

Having spent the last year warring over climate legislation, environmental and industry lobbyists are now facing off over an even higher-stakes trophy: the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection [...]

Close to four months after the Supreme Court's landmark ruling to roll back restrictions on corporate political spending, conservatives continue to downplay its significance. Predictions that the Citizens United v. [...]

Even as Republican Party officials struggle to quell the uproar over their questionable spending, they are pressing ahead with a bid to win access to vast new sources of unregulated [...]

Given voter disgust with both Congress and federal deficits, it's remarkable how unabashedly some lawmakers have jumped in to defend the increasingly controversial budget line items known as earmarks. Sen. [...]

For all the praise that has greeted the Federal Communications Commission's blueprint for a wired nation, the recently released National Broadband Plan sets up an inevitable clash of telecommunications lobbying [...]

In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent ruling to deregulate corporate political spending, public attention has focused squarely on whether businesses and for-profit companies will now lavish big money [...]

Having mounted an unprecedented push for a consumer protection agency as the centerpiece of a financial industry regulatory overhaul, consumer advocates may soon face a painful choice: bail or bite [...]

It's too early to say how the messy, protracted health care debate will end. But one thing is already clear: It's generated record lobbying expenditures. And like health care itself, [...]

When it comes to organization and money, the Tea Party movement has until now looked like something put together by the Mad Hatter, marked more by squabbling and chaos than [...]

Congressional Democrats have moved quickly to sketch out legislation that would blunt the impact of the Supreme Court's recent ruling to free up corporate political spending. But the first official [...]

Having thoroughly ticked off the K Street crowd with a string of controversial lobbying restrictions last year, President Obama has signaled that he's not done yet -- either with anti-lobbyist [...]

In the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark ruling to free up corporate political spending, First Amendment advocates have scoffed at the notion that Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission [...]

Some predict that the Supreme Court's recent Citizens United ruling will radically redefine American politics, while others argue that its impact will be negligible. But the truth is, no one [...]

Campaign reform advocates stunned by the Supreme Court's sweeping rejection of existing limits on political spending are taking comfort in two small consolations. First, while the court threw out decades-old [...]

The Supreme Court has yet to issue its long-anticipated ruling on corporate political spending, but many campaign finance activists and experts are already convinced that American elections will never be [...]

It's been a heady week for Republicans exulting in positive poll numbers and the announced retirements of two senior Senate Democrats. But a pesky problem is putting a damper on [...]

Nearly a year after President Obama launched his administration with sweeping new ethics and transparency rules, the war over lobbyists and their role in Washington is just beginning. On the [...]

Fifteen months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers left financial services industry lobbyists in a defensive crouch, Wall Street has come roaring back. Commercial banks spent close to $40 million [...]

On the surface, the GOP assault on the liberal activist group known as ACORN looks more than justifiable. After all, who would want to defend an organization whose rap sheet [...]

At a time when the rest of Washington can't seem to stop bickering, voting rights advocates have quietly scored a bipartisan victory to help military and overseas voters participate in [...]

The furor over abortion and health care has brought fresh scrutiny to the nation's Catholic bishops, who've emerged as formidable lobbyists but who face virtually none of the lobbying or [...]

Updated at 3:11 p.m. on Nov. 16. As the Obama administration's complicated tug of war with lobbyists continues, Washington's professional persuaders are fighting back the best way they know how: [...]

A simmering conflict between the House ethics committee and its fledgling investigative arm has escalated into open combat, prompting watchdogs to warn that lawmakers may be gearing up to kill [...]

LOOKING FOR MORE? If you think the health care reform fight has been aggressive, hear this: The lobbying war over climate change could be even nastier. The climate bill battle [...]

For years, First Amendment champions have argued that all campaign finance rules tread on free speech and that American elections should be completely deregulated. It's a sweeping premise that Congress [...]

The investigation into a prominent lobbying firm's fake letters to Congress points up the dangers to K Street in so-called grassroots and grass-tops lobbying, both of which are increasingly popular [...]

When philandering politicians fail to keep their pants zipped, public attention tends to zero in on the salacious details: the stoic wife, the smoldering e-mails, the humiliating apologies. But in [...]

A loaded question looms over Senate health care negotiations as they enter the crucial phase between now and mid-October: What if Democrats don't win the 60 votes they need to [...]