License to Speak?

SkrewBawl, among others, notes that Shays-Meehan, aka the campaign finance reform bill, passed the House recently. The New York Times ran an interesting story on it, discussing the possible effects on web sites. The problem is, existing campaign finance laws already cover the internet.

Shays-Meehan isn't likely to pass this year. Though the House passed it, the Senate Republicans have the ability to filibuster and prevent it from passing as they did last year. So you probably need not worry about that bill passing or about any meaningful reforms in our election system; Dubya¹ will win the election with millions upon millions of dollars of "soft money" funneled through his party and not subject to campaign finance laws.

But let's look at existing campaign finance laws. They require, among many other things, that anyone who spends more than $250 promoting a candidate, even totally independently of that candidate's campagin committee or political apparatus, must register with the FEC. Spend over $1000 and you have to register as a political action committee. The problem is, when looking at websites, the FEC counts the cost of the domain name, the hardware used to run the site, bandwidth and other costs, as well as the actual time and/or money spent to develop the site - so essentially every website which promotes a specific candidate is in violation of the law unless they file with the FEC. Furthermore, the proprietor of the website must include his full name along with his political message - it is illegal to anonymously endorse or oppose a candidate for office.

There is doubt about the constitutionality of that statute. An Ohio law which also outlawed anonymity was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1995, in a case called Mcintyre vs. Ohio elections Commission. Nevertheless, the federal statute has never been directly challenged and the FEC does not consider it to have been affected by the Mcintyre decision.

So what problems will occur as the next set of major elections draws near? If anonymity is outlawed, individuals cannot freely express their opinions without fear of retaliation.

If anonymity is permitted, Internet electioneering is likely to turn into a horde of fake astro-turf sites which are allegedly independent supporters of candidate X, but were actually created and paid for by the candidate. We've already seen this in movie promotion and other forums; for even higher stakes such as the Presidency, you can expect correspondingly more fakery.

As for myself, I'm undecided. This country's election system desperately needs an overhaul. But it seems like most of the proposed changes wouldn't do much to improve the system, and lead to draconian restrictions on political speech on the Internet and elsewhere. What's the solution?

1. George W. Bush, Jr.