New Jersey's finance watchdog, the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, has voted in favor of joining a Republican State Committee lawsuit against dark money group Jersey Freedom.

Republicans accused the mysterious group of sending mailers and creating online and television ads all to boost so-called phantom candidates meant to siphon votes away from Republicans who are actually running.

And as Ted Goldberg reports, the lawsuit is also attracting some unlikely support from Progressive Third parties.

All in favor, please say I. I also vote yes.

And any objections?

That passes unanimously After about a half hour of closed door discussion, New Jersey's election law Enforcement Commission has decided to get involved in the Republican State Committee's lawsuit against the dark money group, Jersey Freedom.

It's a lawsuit that's also attracted unlikely allies in progressive third parties like New Jersey's Working Families Party.

Today, you are sending a very clear and decisive message that every group seeking to operate in our elections must be held accountable and must be held to the same standards.

ELEC will join the lawsuit as an amicus party offering experience and knowledge without advocating for a particular side.

The GOP lawsuit alleges that Jersey Freedom violated campaign finance laws and ran phantom candidates in South Jersey on conservative sounding lines in an effort to siphon away votes from Republican candidates who were legitimately running for office.

We had a Libertarian candidate here, Shawn Peck who, once the mailers started hitting, said right away, I don't want to do this.

And he actually dropped out of the race and supported me.

When organizations like Jersey Freedom materialize and start spending vast sums of money to create what we think are, frankly deceptive situations, intentionally adding misinformation and confusion to voters Election Day decisions.

That's a problem.

Millions of voters went to the ballot to determine control of our New Jersey legislature in November, and we firmly believe and saw that Jersey Freedom's actions last year made a mockery of our election laws and threatened to weaken our democracy.

Senator Vince Polistina won reelection by a comfortable 14 points despite facing off against a phantom candidate.

But he says other phantom candidates played a role in GOP candidates losing in South Jersey.

He also says ELEC needs to investigate Jersey Freedom.

Obviously, anybody can start any group to support whoever they want, but they're supporting somebody who wasn't even running and they were doing it in a way to to hide where the money was coming from.

And so that's a concern for democracy generally.

And that's why we're pursuing the litigation and pursuing the avenues to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Our organization believes that when an informed electorate is allowed to vote without manipulation or interference, we'll be able to achieve a democracy that best serves the interests of the people of our state.

Advocates for New Jersey's Working Families Party were happy to see ELEC get involved in the GOP lawsuit against Jersey Freedom, which has its next court date on January 10th.

Interim state director Antoinette Miles says we should expect more dark money in the future.

More shadowy dark money groups are going to pop up in future elections, and they would take it as a signal to engage in type of these type of tactics moving forward if actions are not being taken.

While Senator Polistina says state lawmakers might need to tweak campaign finance laws in the future.

They just broke the law.

But, you know, there are other disclosures that we have to require of independent expenditures leading up to an election so people know where the money is coming from.

That is definitely something that we should be looking at in the legislature.

Jersey Freedom spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in state races this year before a judge froze their spending in early November.

We reached out to Jersey Freedom for comment on this story and they did not respond to us.

In Trenton.

I'm Ted Goldberg.

NJ Spotlight News.