Foreign Funding, Ranked Choice Voting Top Election Integrity Concerns, Report Finds

The 2024 election concluded with few complaints or disputes from either side—but key improvements still need to be made to ensure free and fair contests, according to a new report from an election integrity watchdog. 

“The election integrity movement has had enormous success over the last four years. But make no mistake: the fight is far from over, and if conservatives take their eye off the ball now the next election will not run as smoothly,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told The Daily Signal. 

“After all, the left is not giving up: they are continuing their assault on election integrity laws, fighting to enfranchise noncitizens, and laundering foreign money into influential ballot measure campaigns all over the country to advance abortion and rewrite our election laws for partisan gain,” Snead continued. “The 2024 election was not the end of the fight for election integrity, it was just the beginning.”

The Honest Election Project’s 2025 “Safeguarding Our Elections” report prioritized doing away with foreign funding of ballot measures as the top of its 14 suggestions. 

“It is illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to political candidates, but a legal loophole allows them to contribute both directly and indirectly to ballot measure campaigns,” the report notes, adding, “Ballot issues can rewrite election laws and change state Constitutions.”

The report adds polling shows 78% of Americans oppose foreign nationals influencing elections. 

In 2024, Ohio enacted a ban on foreign nationals directly or indirectly financing ballot issue campaigns, which the Honest Elections Project views as a model for other states.

A ban on ranked choice voting came in second place as a priority on the organization’s report. Ranked choice voting is when voters rank candidates on a ballot rather than choose one. 

“As of 2024, eleven states have banned RCV, more than double the number in 2023,” the report says. “This includes Missouri where voters enshrined a ban in the state’s constitution. The 2024 election proved that there is no public appetite for RCV. Nevertheless, the donors and groups behind RCV have already indicated they will double down and continue pushing for RCV nationwide.”

The third priority is to block what the report calls “Zuck Bucks 2.0,” which is the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a coalition of nonprofits that is a project of the Center for Tech and Civic Life. 

The name “Zuck Bucks,” or often called “Zuckerbucks” derives from the near $400 million that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which was donated to the jurisdiction to run elections in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report notes the money went overwhelmingly to jurisdictins that voted heavily for Joe Biden. 

The report further calls for requiring more transparency and post-election audits of election processes.

It also calls for banning noncitizen voting. In the November election, eight states approved constitutional amendments to ban noncitizen voting. Nevertheless, 21 local jurisdictions in California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Vermont, and the District of Columbia allow noncitizens to vote in local races for school board, mayor, and similar local offices. 

The report goes on to call for maintaining clean and accurate voter rolls, requiring voter ID for every ballot; ensuring that elected lawmakers write election laws; and requiring prompt and accurate election results.

The report also calls for protecting the integrity of the voter registration process, securing early and mail-in voting laws, investigating and prosecuting election crimes, and consolidating election dates.

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