Summary:

In 2006 George Soros Funded A Project To Elect Progressive Liberals To Secretary Of State Offices The "Secretary of State Project" was an American non-profit, progressive 527 political action committee focused on electing reform-minded progressive Secretaries of State in battleground states, who typically oversee the election process.

The bulwark consists of control of secretary of state offices in five key states - Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio - where the difference between victory and defeat in the 2004 presidential election was no more than 120,000 votes in any one of them.

The effort began in 2006 when a group of liberal California activists created an independent 527 group designed to elect secretaries of state.

The Secretary of State Project ran independent ads of its own and ensured that donors - many of whom were affiliated with Democracy Alliance, a network of wealthy fundraisers that channels money to liberal causes across the country - knew which candidates deserved donations.

The Secretary of State Project is said in some places to have folded, but the goal and efforts of groups like the Democracy Alliance went on unabated.

Note that an early success of the Project was getting liberal Democrat Mark Ritchie elected as Minnesota Secretary of State in 2006.

Ritchie then used his authority as Secretary of State to keep the vote count open in the razor-close contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken in 2008.

Edit: Had to fix formatting.