A foreign billionaire paid hundreds of millions of dollars to a communist dark money benefactor who was the author of Ohio ballot measure Matter 1, a gerrymandering effort that could give Democrats a definite advantage there. Early this year, the state passed a moratorium on international funding for such activities.
Ohio people will vote in November on Topic 1, which would create a committee of “non-politician” officials to redraw district ranges, according to Ballotpedia. Five Republicans, five Democrats, and five independent or often affiliated people do make up the payment.
The main party behind Issue 1 — Citizens No Officials — has taken funding from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a , branch , of communist dark money large Arabella Advisors, economic records show. The organization has received hundreds of millions of dollars from Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss tycoon, in accordance with a regulator report.
The initiative may effectively lead to redistricting that mainly favors Democrats, according to Republicans and election integrity advocates, who contend that this could aid the party in gaining control of Congress.
Democratic state senator, in the words of the Republican state senator, “what they’re after is the greatest reward of flipping three to four parliamentary seats in the state of Ohio.” Rob McColley told The Federalist. That could possibly determine whether Republicans or Democrats control the US House of Representatives.
Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead shared these fears, calling the action” a power capture by the quit” that “is intended to do an end run around the political process in Ohio.”
” It’s all designed to be entirely insulated from political accountability and, basically, from public opinion”, Snead told The Federalist. In Ohio, it is possible that sufficient new Democrats will be elected to determine which party will rule Congress in 2026.
Black Money From Abroad
According to an October 2024 report from Americans for Public Trust ( APT ), Wyss, who some conservatives have called the” New Soros,” has given at least$ 243 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund” since its inception.” The Sixteen Thirty Fund, according to the review, “takes benefit of foreign influence flaws” to, among other things, “bankroll efforts to raise the Biden-Harris agenda”, “invest in massive voter turnout operations”, and” help vote problem campaigns”. In Ohio alone, the Sixteen Thirty Fund spent close to$ 15 million to affect the state’s policies, according to the report.
Caitlin Sutherland, an executive director of the APT, reported to The Federalist that Citizens Not Politicians received close to$ 7 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund between October 2023 and June 2024.
” They’re the group’s number one donor”, Sutherland said.
Foreign contributions to elections are prohibited by federal law, but the Federal Elections Committee has argued that this prohibition does not apply to campaigns for ballot measures, as Ballotpedia has noted. Ohio earlier this year closed this loophole by outlawing foreign funding for ballot initiatives.
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” We became aware of the Sixteen Thirty Fund’s involvement through the campaign finance disclosures”, said McColley, who introduced a similar ban on foreign funding for ballot measures. ” We quickly discovered that Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire, is the main financier of the Sixteen Thirty Fund,” according to our research. It immediately caused us to ask the question,’ How is this permitted?'”
McColley said the effort faced “more opposition than we anticipated” in the state House. Still, HB 1 passed on mostly partisan lines, and Gov. In June, DeWine signed the ban into law.
According to a subsequent lawsuit brought in part by the Elias Law Group, which is led by infamous Trump-Russia hoax peddler Marc Elias, the organization claimed that the ban on free speech was imposed in response to a previous report from The Associated Press. The case is still in progress, but earlier this month, a judge allowed Ohio to enforce the law in time for the 2024 election.  ,
Citizens Not Politicians paid Elias ‘ firm nearly$ 70, 000 for “legal services” between October 2023 and June 2024, according to records from Ohio’s campaign finance database. It paid the firm$ 7, 500 just days before the special session.
The group’s campaign filing from July shows a “balance on hand” of zero dollars and total expenditures of more than$ 24.8 million. This balance is still zero, according to its most recent filing from October 24.
Thousands of dollars worth of ads reportedly being run by the organization to promote redistricting change ahead of the election.
” It’s a bunch of pre-booked ads paid for with this foreign-backed cash, which by the way is now illegal in Ohio, blanketing the airwaves”, Sutherland said.
The Honest Elections Project and APT recently made the announcement to launch a six-figure digital ad campaign titled” Exploring Issue 1 in Ohio.”
After the state’s foreign funding ban came into effect, APT posted on X on Friday, citing recent documents, that The Sixteen Thirty Fund stopped funding Citizens Not Politicians. This provides even more proof that the Sixteen Thirty Fund serves as a conduit for foreign currency.
Rigging The Electorate
Citizens Not Politicians claims passing Issue 1 would “ban politicians from gerrymandering” —or the “rigging voting districts” — by “putting citizens in charge” of redistricting.
In reality, a commission under a bureaucratic makeup would be able to draw districts with the intention of determining whether each party controls which districts, matching the political leanings of the state’s overall population.
For instance, according to Snead, the commission would be set up to ensure” the state will elect 53 percent of its representatives as Republicans and 47 percent as Democrats” if the statewide population drops to 53 percent Republicans and 43 percent Democrats.
The current requirement for” state legislative and congressional districts” to be” compact” would be eliminated by the Ohio measure. The proposed amendment would permit the division of left-wing cities into distinct districts where their population can overtake rural conservatives, as both Snead and McColley pointed out.  ,
McColley said the measure would “put gerrymandering into] Ohio’s ] Constitution” by “drawing districts solely to favor one party over the other” and” splitting up political subdivisions solely for political advantage” . ,
According to McColley,” Those blue islands will be divided into as many districts as possible to maximize the number of Democratic districts.”  ,
State Democrats used a similar approach when redrawing district lines in Oregon in 2021. Instead of the previous three, they divided the Portland Metro Area into four distinct districts, turning many of the state’s rural Republican districts into major Democratic districts.
Ohio already has a text=Every%2010%20years%20after%20the,of%20the%20most%20recent%20Census.” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>redistricting commission, including the governor, secretary of state, auditor, and appointees chosen by state Senate and House leaders. The new commission — funded by taxpayers— would appoint members from a pool of “applicants” through a screening process overseen by retired partisan judges, according to the initiative’s text.
The initiative would “require the commission to immediately create new legislative and congressional districts in 2025 to replace the most recent districts,” so it could significantly alter Ohio’s political geography as soon as the following year.
” You’re going to see the changes go into effect almost immediately, where communities will be needlessly split up for political advantage”, McColley said. The notion that each district shall be drawn for one party’s political advantage over the other will be completely subrogated by the anti-gerrymandering provisions in our current constitution.
As The Federalist previously reported, leftist organizations successfully codified abortion as a right in the Ohio constitution last year. Democrats are expanding ballot measure efforts nationwide, pushing abortion, marijuana, mail-in voting, and ranked-choice voting.
Snead claimed that left-wing dark money organizations are funding these efforts in important areas.
” We’ve seen this rise in the use of citizen initiative initiatives to advance progressive agendas across the country,” he said. They “write these measures to achieve 110 percent of what they could ever hope.”
According to Sutherland, the Sixteen Thirty Fund is making significant investments in states that are” competitive battleground presidential states, or a competitive U.S. Senate race, or both.”
For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.
Logan Washburn is a staff writer who writes about election ethics. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan was born and raised in Central Oregon, but now resides in rural Michigan.