FEC Will Not Regulate Political Blogging

eldavojohn writes "Despite complaints that political bloggers should be subject to campaign finance laws since they are donating huge amounts of money in the form of advertising and media services to candidates, the FEC will not regulate political blogging. From the FEC statement: 'While the complaint asserts that DailyKos advocates for the election of Democrats for federal office, the commission has repeatedly stated that an entity that would otherwise qualify for the media exemption does not lose its eligibility because it features news or commentary lacking objectivity or expressly advocates in its editorial the election or defeat of a federal candidate.'"

Comments

Re:How long until they change their minds?

[Relic of the Future]

The failure of third-party candidates isn't as much about lack of exposure as it is about simple mathematics. The way we count votes actively discourages more than two contenders being in any election.

In order to have any chance, third-parties need to get "first past the post" removed as the voting algorthm, and replaced with something like a Condorcet or even (bleh) IRV system.

Re:Good news

[FleaPlus]

I think the bad feelings (and subsequent reactionary attempts at regulation) come from the fact that the conservative voter base tends to be a bit older and less Internet-savvy. Do you have any examples to support the belief that conservative bloggers support more internet regulation? Everything I've seen on the topic from them are very much against the FEC regulating political blogging.

There's no reason they couldn't have the conservative equivalent of DailyKos, but it just wouldn't get read as much. Instapundit.com has the same google ranking as DailyKos. There's also forums like freerepublic.com which have been around longer than Daily Kos and have a similar amount of traffic.