Tell President Obama: It’s time to shine a light on dark money

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(Photo credit: Official White House Photo/Flickr)

A few weeks ago, 19 organizations started asking tough but fair questions about President Obama’s legacy on campaign finance issues. Now, this opengov coalition is demanding the president use the tools at his disposal to fight the influx of secret money in our politics — and they need your help.

Sign the petition telling President Obama to act now, unmasking the anonymous big donors that have an outsized influence our elections.

It has been nearly six years since the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for super PACs and dark money groups to wash our elections in unprecedented amounts of cold, hard cash. Despite fiery rhetoric, President Obama has done little to fight against this rising tide influencing our politics. Worse, he has tacitly approved of his own party’s embrace of unlimited money while refusing to move forward on a number of reforms that could be accomplished by executive action alone.

This new coalition of grassroots organizations — which includes Demand Progress, Common Cause, People For The American Way, Mayday.us and more — is looking to force the Obama administration to acknowledge this disparity, and your voice is needed.

They have launched a petition that will receive a response if it reaches 100,000 signatures. The petition calls for President Obama to immediately move forward with an executive order that would require federal contractors to disclose their political spending. This was first proposed in 2011, but failed to go anywhere. The time has come for action.

The petition also calls on President Obama to push the FCC, IRS and SEC to take actions that would shed light on various aspects of the dark money problem and urges him to change the make up of the notoriously dysfunctional FEC by appointing reform-minded commissioners.

The petition is already well on the way to achieving its goal, accumulating 81,000 signatures. If you want to help them reach that mark, you can sign on here and ask President Obama to choose real action over empty rhetoric.