Paul Weyrich

Weyrich co-founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973 and, in 1979, with Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority, which registered millions of evangelical Christians who had previously voted little. He also founded the American Legislative Exchange Council, which circulates model bills to state legislators. In 1980 he said openly that conservatives' leverage 'goes up as the voting populace goes down', a remark often cited by critics of later voting restrictions.