The rapid growth and increased prominence of outside groups attempting to influence voters in the 2010 midterm election was apparent to all Americans who saw the deluge of campaign spending and TV ads this year. But the matter of who actually financed such groups is far less clear, as the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision made it much easier for groups to raise secret money from individuals and corporations to advance their political agendas. A new report by Public Citizen, Disclosure Eclipse, details how 2010 became a watershed moment for groups who do not publicly disclose the sources of their funding:

Of 308 outside groups, excluding party committees, that reported spending money on this year’s elections, just 116 (53.9 percent) provided any information about the sources of their funding, according to Public Citizen’s analysis of Federal Election Commission (FEC) data.

Of the 10 top spending groups, only three provided information about their founders. These top 10 groups – which collectively spent $138.5 million, equal to 52 percent of the $266.4 million spent by all outside groups in the 2010 to influence this years election – disclosed the sources of only 27.1 percent, of the money they spent.

Groups not disclosing any information about their funders collectively spent $135.6 million to influence this year’s elections. That was almost exactly double the $68.9 million grand total spent by outside groups in 2006, the most recent midterm election cycle.

Although the Supreme Court’s opinion in Citizens United lauded the virtues of disclosure, the effect that decision and the court’s earlier retrenchment of campaign finance regulations in 2007 has been less disclosure.

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Such disclosure, [Justice] Kennedy wrote, would enable citizens to “see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”

But, even for independent expenditures, no provision requires the type of disclosure that Kennedy discussed. The plain rules of [Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act] require such disclosures, but the FEC has gutted them.

In 2010, as mentioned above, only 70 percent of 30 top spending groups provided any information about their funding sources. These groups disclosed only 55.4 percent of their independent expenditures.

People For the American Way’s Citizens Blindsided: Secret Corporate Money in the 2010 Elections and America’s New Shadow Democracy report shows how undisclosed money is flowing into groups with a specifically pro-corporate political agenda. Members of Congress who supported measures to reform Wall Street and the health insurance system found themselves in the crosshairs of shadowy organizations which did not reveal their donors to the public. As this Public Citizen analysis demonstrates, Supreme Court rulings and the resulting FEC actions dismantled campaign finance rules to the point where secret money took off in the 2010 election, mostly to the benefit of pro-corporate politicians and causes.