USA TODAY and the Republic found at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law.
The investigation examined nearly 1 million bills in all 50 states and Congress using a computer algorithm developed to detect similarities in language. That search – powered by the equivalent of 150 computers that ran nonstop for months – compared known model legislation with bills introduced by lawmakers.
There isn't some tagline "this bill contributed by ALEC!"
But they are hardly the only player, we were interested in not only identifying how far these known model bills are going but also surface bills from groups we don't know about!
Also, not all model bills are necessarily malicious - we found hundreds of bills that were almost identical but were just trying to standardize things like how we license nurses or other healthcare practitioners.