Nonprofit playing "mystery" role in California ballot measure

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

[Charles] Hurth is the registered agent for Take Initiative America, a tax-exempt group formed Sept. 10, 2007, according to the organization's incorporation documents. A day later, the group made its hefty donation to fund petition-gathering that would get the so-called Presidential Election Reform Act on the June ballot.

The donation was the only reported contribution to the ballot-measure campaign, according to financial documents released earlier this week.

The proposed ballot measure would change the winner-take-all election rules for the 55 electoral votes in Democratic-leaning California. It would allocate the electoral votes based on the popular vote winner in each individual congressional district - providing an unexpected windfall for Republicans.

Leading Democratic presidential candidates and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have charged that the effort is a Republican dirty trick to change the election rules in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign.

But Hurth's utter lack of connections to politics in California has raised cries of foul play and suggestions that a major GOP presidential candidate could be behind the matter.

Democrats say Hurth violated the spirit if not the letter of California campaign finance laws because he would not disclose the source of his group's funding.

"Under the law, you're prohibited from making a contribution through an intermediary without disclosing the true donor," said San Francisco attorney James Harrison, representing Californians for Fair Elections, a Democratic group opposing the measure. "That's considered money laundering."

Jonathan Wilcox, the spokesman for the Missouri-based Take Initiative America group, said Hurth's organization is a nonpartisan, grassroots effort working for election reform. But he insisted, "We have a national network of donors ... and we will comply with all disclosure laws."

Roman Porter, spokesman for the state Fair Political Practices Commission, when asked Wednesday about the Democrats' charges, said. "We're aware of the concern regarding this situation, and we're reviewing it."

This is another example of where a nonprofit appears to be following all disclosure laws, but is still being asked to do more. You may recall that there were calls for Sen. Edwards to disclose funders from a nonprofit he was heavily involved in before his presidential run. It will be interesting to see if there is a movement that spawns from these types of activities to change disclosure rules for nonprofits that engage in certain election activities.

UPDATE: Apparently the folks behind the initiative aren't doing so well.