2,000+ state legislators. 500+ model bills. Corporations draft legislation with elected officials in private meetings — no disclosure, no lobbying registration, no public record. Your legislator introduces the bill as their own.
This is not speculation. ALEC's own IRS 990 filings document the corporate membership structure. The model bills are publicly archived after leaks in 2011. The legislative record shows introduction.
| Bill | Corporate Author / Task Force | Who Benefits | States | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stand Your Ground[5] Castle Doctrine expansion |
NRA / Criminal Justice Task Force | Gun manufacturers, NRA | 30+ states | LAW |
| Voter ID Act[6] Photo ID requirement for voting |
Elections Task Force | Reduces Democratic-leaning voter turnout | 34 states | LAW (some struck) |
| Truth in Sentencing Act[7] Mandatory minimum sentences |
GEO Group + CoreCivic / Criminal Justice | Private prison bed guarantee | 28 states | LAW |
| Right-to-Work Act Eliminates union dues requirement |
Koch / Commerce Task Force | Weakens unions → weakens Dem base | 27 states | LAW |
| Electricity Freedom Act[8] Repeal renewable energy standards |
Koch Industries / Energy Task Force | Fossil fuel industry | 18+ states | Partially blocked |
| Municipal Broadband Preemption Bans city-owned internet |
AT&T + Comcast / Telecom Task Force | ISP monopoly protection | 19 states | LAW |
| Anti-BDS Contractor Requirement[9] No state contracts for BDS supporters |
StandWithUs / CUFI / JFNA (ALEC-adjacent) | AIPAC political architecture | 38 states | Multiple courts struck · re-passed |
| Living Wage Preemption Bars cities from raising minimum wage |
Walmart / Restaurant Industry / Commerce | Low-wage employer margin protection | 25 states | LAW |
Every state has at least one. They present as neutral research organizations. They are funded by the corporations whose model legislation they provide "independent" cover for.
[ALEC LEGISLATIVE CAPTURE MACHINE] │ ├── INTELLECTUAL LAYER (produces the ideas): │ ├── Heritage Foundation → national policy framework │ ├── SPN (64 state think tanks) → "independent" state research │ └── ALEC model bill library (500+ active) → legislative text │ ├── FUNDING LAYER (same network throughout): │ ├── Koch Industries / Koch Foundation → Heritage + ALEC + SPN + AFP │ ├── Bradley Foundation → Heritage + SPN + school voucher programs │ ├── Scaife Foundations → Heritage + SPN + Federalist Society │ └── Industry-specific: GEO/CoreCivic (criminal justice) │ AT&T/Comcast (telecom) · ExxonMobil (energy) │ PhRMA members (healthcare) · Walmart (labor) │ ├── LEGISLATIVE EXECUTION: │ ├── ALEC task forces (corporate + legislator joint drafting) │ ├── 2,000+ state legislators as ALEC members │ ├── Model bills introduced without attribution in all 50 states │ └── SPN research cited as independent justification at hearings │ ├── OUTCOME LAYER: │ ├── Private prison: mandatory minimums fill GEO/CoreCivic beds │ ├── Fossil fuel: renewable standards repealed · deregulation │ ├── Labor: Right-to-Work in 27 states · union weakening │ ├── Voter suppression: Voter ID in 34 states │ ├── ISP monopoly: municipal broadband blocked in 19 states │ └── AIPAC-adjacent: Anti-BDS in 38 states · IHRA in 34 │ └── APEX (same as everywhere): 🏦 Koch/Bradley/Scaife → fund all layers simultaneously 🏛️ Industry sectors → fund specific task forces for specific bills → Return on ALEC investment: orders of magnitude above dues
ALEC is not a lobbying organization. It is a legislative drafting service operating inside state governments — where the clients are corporations, the workers are elected legislators, and the product is law. GEO Group wrote the bills that filled their own prison beds. AT&T wrote the bills that blocked their municipal competitors. ExxonMobil wrote the bills that repealed renewable standards. The corporations' dues are tax-deductible. Their legislators pay $100/year. The bills appear as the legislators' independent policy judgment. The public has no record that any of this occurred. That is not a flaw in the transparency system. The opacity is the product.
There's an organization called ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council. Here's how it works: corporations pay up to $500,000 a year to be members. Your state legislator pays $100. They sit in the same room, and together they draft model laws. The legislator takes that law home and introduces it in your statehouse — as their own idea, with no requirement to tell you where it came from.[1]
It's like if your school board voted on curriculum — but half the voters were textbook publishers who paid 500 times more for their seat than the elected members did.
You know Stand Your Ground laws? The "shoot first" laws that made national news after Trayvon Martin? That started as an ALEC model bill, written with help from the NRA, and spread to 30+ states.[5] Voter ID laws — the same language appeared in 34 states in the same year, right after the redistricting cycle. The private prison company GEO Group sat on the committee that wrote the mandatory minimum sentencing laws — which guaranteed the prison population that fills their beds.[7]
The corporations' ALEC membership dues are tax-deductible. So you — the taxpayer — are subsidizing the cost of corporations writing the laws that govern you. The system is not broken. This is how it was designed to work.
ALEC. Look it up. Corporations pay up to half a million a year to be members. Your state legislator pays a hundred bucks. They sit in the same room, draft laws together in private, and the legislator goes home and introduces it like they thought of it. No disclosure. No lobbying registration. Tax deductible for the corporations.[1,2]
If a restaurant and a food inspector were both on the committee that sets health codes, and the restaurant paid 500x more to be on the committee — you'd call that a conflict of interest. ALEC is that, but for every law in your state.
GEO Group — private prison company — sat on the committee that wrote mandatory minimum sentencing laws.[7] More mandatory minimums = more inmates = more revenue for GEO Group. They wrote the law that filled their own facilities. That's not capitalism. That's just purchasing the government.
Your ISP charges you what it wants because AT&T and Comcast wrote the model law — through ALEC — that prevents 19 states from building their own public internet.[3] You vote for the legislator. The legislator introduces the AT&T bill. You pay AT&T's price. The loop is clean.
ALEC is effectively a policy-as-a-service platform operating across all 50 state legislatures. The architecture: a centralized model bill library (the API), distributed implementors (2,000+ state legislators as registered endpoints), corporate clients (who pay for API access and contribute to the model bill library), and a validation layer (SPN think tanks) that provides independent-seeming peer review that is actually produced by the same funding network.
It's a supply chain attack on democratic governance: instead of attacking the elected officials directly, you inject malicious code at the upstream dependency level (the model bill library) that all downstream implementations draw from.
ALEC's 501(c)(3) classification allows corporate members to deduct dues as business expenses.[2] This means the federal government — via the tax deduction — is subsidizing the cost of corporate legislative drafting. The exploit: by framing legislative influence as "educational scholarship," ALEC converts a political expenditure (which would not be deductible) into an educational expense (which is). The IRS classification enables the entire architecture.
The strongest technical evidence of coordination: identical legislative language appearing in multiple state legislatures within a single session. Voter ID bills in 34 states, 2011, with statistically improbable language similarity.[6] Independent policy development across 34 legislatures does not produce that level of text similarity. It is the forensic signature of a centralized distribution mechanism.
Existe una organización llamada ALEC — el American Legislative Exchange Council. Las corporaciones pagan hasta $500,000 al año para ser miembros. Los legisladores estatales pagan $100. Se sientan juntos en reuniones privadas y redactan leyes. El legislador regresa a su estado e introduce esas leyes como si fueran propias — sin ninguna obligación de decirte de dónde vienen.[1]
Es como si un restaurante y el inspector de sanidad estuvieran en el mismo comité que establece los códigos de salud, y el restaurante pagara 500 veces más por su asiento que los miembros elegidos.
La empresa de prisiones privadas GEO Group estuvo en el comité que redactó las leyes de sentencias mínimas obligatorias.[7] Más sentencias mínimas = más presos = más ingresos para GEO Group. Escribieron la ley que llenó sus propias instalaciones. Las leyes de identificación para votar aparecieron con el mismo lenguaje en 34 estados en el mismo año — coordinadas a través de ALEC.[6] AT&T y Comcast escribieron las leyes modelo que prohíben a 19 estados construir su propio internet público.
Las cuotas de membresía de ALEC son deducibles de impuestos para las corporaciones. Es decir, tú — el contribuyente — estás subsidiando el costo de que las corporaciones escriban las leyes que te gobiernan. El sistema no está roto. Así fue diseñado.