Happy Saturday! We’ve made several major improvements to VoteROI.com.

It’s faster. Cleaner. More accurate. And a lot easier to use.

Now we need real users and donors. Our hook is more of your donation goes directly to the candidate, not Actblue overhead.

👉 Go here: https://www.voteroi.com

Click around. Search races. Try the donation flow. Push it a little. See what happens. Make a donation to a candidate you support.

If something feels off, tell me.
If something works, tell me that too.

Why this matters

There’s a lot of money in politics. Most of it goes nowhere.

VoteROI is built to answer a simple question:

Where can your donations actually make a difference instead of going to a campaign consultant’s new 3rd home or Actblue’s massive overhead costs?

We’re getting closer to that answer. But we need real-world use to finish it.

What you can do right now

• Test the platform:

CLICK HERE TO TRY VOTEROI

• Donate a small amount to a candidate you care about

• 👉 Or you know us, you love us, send your support to what we’re building by sending American Muckrakers a donation here.

We need your feedback

This only gets better if people actually use it.

Send me your:

• suggestions

• comments

• ideas

• or thoughts and prayers

Seriously. All of it helps.

One ask

Don’t overthink it.

Go try it. Spend five minutes. Break something if you can.

That’s how we make this better. We’ll post the results and findings next week.

Have a great weekend!

— David

About the Author

David B. Wheeler is President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers, where he focuses on exposing corruption, following the money, and holding power accountable. He has spent decades building organizations and leading complex operations across more than 50 countries and all seven continents. He is also the force behind VoteROI.com and Election Integrity Watch, platforms designed to inform donors, voters, and friends of democracy.

Disclaimer

The views expressed here are those of the author and are protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. This publication is intended for informational and commentary purposes only.

👉 www.voteroi.com

The idea is simple:

Political donations shouldn’t be guesswork.
They should be smarter, more targeted, and actually matter.

Right now, most money in politics is spent inefficiently. We’re trying to change that.

Subscribe now

Here’s what we need

Go to the site and use it.

• Click around

• Try to donate

• See what works—and what doesn’t

Then tell me.

Where did you hesitate?
What was confusing?
What broke?

If you almost donated but didn’t—that’s exactly what we want to understand.

Be direct

This is early. It’s live, but not perfect.

We don’t need praise—we need honest feedback.

And one more thing

If you believe in what we’re building, please consider supporting the work:

👉 voteroi.com/support

American Muckrakers is funding this effort, and your support helps us keep building and improving it.

If this works, it could change how money flows in politics.

Help us get it right.

— David

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March and April weren’t about noise. They were about building.

Here’s exactly what we’ve been doing and why it matters.

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1. We’re now tracking the battlefield in real time

We launched Election Integrity Watch (EIW) — a live dashboard monitoring political risk, momentum shifts, and emerging threats.

👉 https://eiw.americanmuckrakers.com

This gives us something campaigns and most PACs don’t have:

• Real-time signal, not lagging polling

• Early detection of shifts that actually change outcomes

• The ability to move faster and smarter

We’re not guessing anymore. We’re watching it happen.

2. We built a system to answer the only question that matters

At the same time, we launched VoteROI:

👉 https://www.voteroi.com

This is the core problem in politics:

Millions of dollars go into races that were never winnable.

VoteROI is our answer:

• Identify races where money can actually move the margin

• Help donors avoid “money pit” campaigns

• Focus resources where outcomes can change

This is early. Use it. Push it. Tell us what works.

3. We didn’t just launch tools — we built the engine behind them

Behind the scenes, we’ve been doing the harder work:

• Building a framework to evaluate winnability and margin elasticity

• Testing real election data against the “money pit” problem

• Designing tools like Donation X-Ray and Donor IQ to track giving behavior

• Exploring new intake models, including crypto, while managing downside risk

At the same time, we’ve:

• Fixed and hardened our donation pipeline

• Eliminated duplicate donation issues

• Ensured clean tracking, receipts, and audit integrity

That may not sound exciting. It should.

Most organizations don’t do this work. We do.

Because if we’re asking you to invest, it has to be done right.

Subscribe now

4. We’re continuing to call out bad spending

We’ve also stayed focused on something most groups avoid:

Telling the truth about unwinnable races.

You’ve seen it:

• High-profile campaigns that “close the gap” but still lose

• Millions raised, zero path to victory

• Donors treated like ATM machines

We’re not doing that.

If we don’t believe a race can be won, we won’t push you into it.

5. Colorado is one we believe can be won

We are focused on defeating Lauren Boebert.

Not as a talking point. As a real objective.

And we have confidence in Rear Admiral Eileen Laubacher.

Why this race matters:

• It’s competitive enough for margins to move

• It has a credible candidate with real leadership experience

• It is exactly the kind of race where disciplined, well-timed support wins

We are not going to flood this early and waste money.

We are going to be precise.

6. What happens next

Over the coming weeks, we will:

• Continue monitoring the race through EIW

• Refine timing and deployment using VoteROI principles

• Expand research and messaging where it actually moves voters

No wasted motion. No vanity plays.

7. What we need from you

If you’ve followed our work, you know this:

We are selective. We are disciplined. And we go where we can win.

This is one of those moments.

Your support right now helps us:

• Continue high-level research and targeting

• Build the infrastructure to compete effectively

• Stay independent and focused on outcomes

👉 Donate here:

or through our prior donation app: HERE

Or subscribe here:

Subscribe now

Or just reply. I read them.

We’re building something different:

• Real-time intelligence

• Real donor strategy

• Real targets we can win

And Colorado is at the top of that list.

— David

David B. Wheeler
President & Co-Founder
American Muckrakers

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About the Author
David B. Wheeler is President and Co-Founder of American Muckrakers, focused on accountability, opposition research, and strategic campaign engagement nationwide.

Disclaimer
The views expressed here are opinions and analysis intended for informational purposes and are protected under the First Amendment.

• Special election.

• Lower turnout.

• National attention.

• An opponent people love to hate.

For a moment, the story wrote itself:

Maybe this is the one.

This time—it almost looked believable.

And that’s exactly why this race is dangerous.

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The Result

Here’s what actually happened:

• Republican: 55.9% (72,304 votes)

• Democrat: 44.1% (57,030 votes)

• Margin: R +12

That is a dramatic improvement over prior cycles.

And it still wasn’t close enough to win.

Read more

Happy Easter if you celebrate. Happy Sunday if you don’t.

Let’s get you caught up.

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It is called Election Integrity Watch (EIW). You can explore it now at:

Election Integrity Watch

This is not a think piece.
It is not a vibes tracker.
It is not another partisan scoreboard pretending to be analysis.

Read more

The current date is March 11, 2026, and the Democratic donor dopamine hit is in full swing. Shawn Harris, a retired Army brigadier general, Afghanistan vet, cattle farmer, and all-around decent guy, topped the jungle primary in Georgia's 14th Congressional District special election with about 37.3% (43,241 votes), edging out Trump-endorsed Republican Clay Fuller at 34.9% (40,388 votes). No 50% majority, so we're barreling toward an April 7 runoff in the seat Marjorie Taylor Greene ditched after her Trump fallout. MeidasTouch types are hyperventilating about a "major warning sign for MAGA" in a district Trump crushed by +37 points in 2024.

Read more

We’ve been dragging Tina Peters through the mud since day one, calling out her election-denying scam, the Mesa County voting-system breach she orchestrated, the taxpayer m…

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As a North Carolinian who's watched our state's politics twist and turn like a mountain road, I've got to say: the conventional wisdom on Roy Cooper's 2026 Senate run is missing the mark. Sure, the former governor cruised through the Democratic primary with over 90% of the vote, and early polls show him leading

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The Tina Peters Saga: A Crash Course in Election Sabotage

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Sometimes humor says what pundits and politicians won’t. Sometimes it simply reminds us that the whole system can be a little ridicu…

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Lauren Boebert had one job.

One.

Hillary Clinton under oath in a closed-door Oversight deposition about Epstein. Years of chatter. Flight logs. Foundation ties. Maxwell connections. For once, not cable TV noise, actual sworn testimony.

And what does Boebert do?

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Since launching American Muckrakers in 2021, we’ve made it our mission to hold terrible politicians accountable through relentless pattern recognition, not gotcha moments, but civic prosecution of character. Few figures have generated more consistent evidence of unfitness than Lauren Boebert.

Our coverage of her began with the very first X post about her on June 3, 2022, calling attention to her early ties to far-right Christian nationalist figures like Sean Feucht. What started as a single thread quickly became a multi-year running audit: a public-risk profile that never stops producing new incidents, new explanations, new denials, and new reasons voters should demand higher standards from anyone who holds congressional office.

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Donate Here Please!

After failing to hold her own district, Lauren Boebert packed up politically and moved to a new one.

That has a name: carpetbagger.

The term dates back to the post–Civil War era, when opportunists from…

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Not the issue.
Not the policy.
Not even the latest outrage.

The negativity.

That’s what Trump, Vance, Bannon, Noem, Bondi, Blanche and the rest of the cruel bandits want us to feel.

A steady drip of frustration. A constant hum that everything is broken. That the system is rigged. That nothing works. That the other side is unstoppable. That collapse is just around the corner.

Keep people agitated long enough and they either burn out or lash out.

That’s the strategy.

And I feel it.

You can feel it in my rural county. Fundraising is down. Civic groups are thinner. People who used to lean in now lean back. They’re not apathetic. They’re tired. They’re frustrated. But ask them who they’re frustrated with and the answer floats. Washington. Raleigh. The courthouse. “All of them.”

When frustration doesn’t have a clear target, it becomes atmosphere.

That’s the negative in the air.

But here’s what they don’t want you to notice.

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Political systems rarely fail because of one bad actor.

They fail because of pairs.

One pushes the boundary.
The other decides whether the boundary still matters.

In North Carolina Republican politics, Michele Morrow and Michael Whatley are often described as opposites. She is framed as extreme and undisciplined. He is framed as professional and responsible. One is treated as the problem. The other as the adult in the room trying to manage it.

That framing is comforting.

It is also wrong.

Michele Morrow and Michael Whatley are not opposites.
They are a system.

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