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

How long until they change their minds?

[Critical Facilities]

Seriously. I think this is great as it gives at least some hope to the prospect of getting third parties on a ballot and giving them some sort of visibility to compete with the standard two parties. What I wonder is, what if a large, successful site (similar to Slashdot, but with an obvious political angle) starts to give enough attention to a third party candidate that seriously threatens the chances of the other 2 parties winning? I'm betting suddenly there would be changes in regulations. I hope not, but I bet there would be.

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:How long until they change their minds?

[eln]

Sites with obvious political biases tend to be frequented only by people with similar political biases. In todays "party uber alles" political culture, these sites are basically echo chambers for members of the particular political party they align with. If one of these sites decided to switch to a third party, it would probably lose a vast majority of its readers as they all went in search of a site for their party. This would happen even if the political philosophy of the site didn't change at all.

The biggest problem with third parties today other than finances is perception. People don't support third parties in any great numbers because all of the major third parties are out on the fringes of the political spectrum. Most people hang out in the political middle, so a 3rd party that caters to the far left (like the Greens) or the far right (like the Libertarians) aren't going to have a whole lot of luck winning elections on the national level. They can only win in localities where the population is heavily skewed toward one end of the political spectrum or the other.

Re:How long until they change their minds?

[cybermage]

You can't swing a cat in this town anymores without braining a couple Mexicans.

That's some cat! You'd think the first Mexican would probably stop its momentum.

Re:How long until they change their minds?

[hidannik]

Most Libertarians would dispute any characterization of their party as far-right, after first disputing that political views can be seen as along only a single dimension.

Instead they would characterize themselves as in favor of both extreme economic freedom (a view usually associated with the far right) and extreme social/personal freedom (a view usually associated with the far left).

Hans

Re:How long until they change their minds?

[Original Replica]

But how do you get representatives to change the system that got them their job? Ug.

It could be done, relatively peacefully, but only if a lot higher percentage of America knew and cared about the severe flaws in our voting system. If you could get the 36% of America that didn't vote in 2004 to actively express their dissatisfaction with our voting system, then it would become an issue would be addressed, eventually. But when that dissatisfaction manifests as voter apathy, well then the problems with our system are met with political apathy. As long as no politician can expect to win a Senate seat off of a campaign based in "Range Voting for a better USA" there will be no change.

What everyone already knows about the internet

[ackthpt]

It's not for promoting candidates, it's for smearing their opponents.

Re:What qualifies for a media exemption?

[Chuckstar]

IANAL, but the answer to this question is based in 208 years of First Amendment law. Probably too voluminous to go into on this forum. However, "press" as defined under federal law is extremely broadly defined.

The key issues that the FEC looks at are as follows:

Is the organization in question owned or controlled by any "political party, political committee, or candidate" (these are defined under the regs). If it is owned by any of these, then it is considered an arm of that group and not "press".

If it is not owned by any of these, then the next question is whether the "major purpose [of the organization] is involvement in campaign activity". If the answer is yes, then it is considered a political committee (see above).

Note that campaign activity is specifically meant to be narrowly defined as involved in a federal election campaign. It does not encompass political activity broadly.

So as long as an organization publishing to the web cannot be considered owned or controlled by any political part, political committee, or candidate and its major purpose is not to be involved in campaign activity, then its protected from these regulations.

Re:Good news

[aeschenkarnos]

There's no reason they couldn't have the conservative equivalent of DailyKos, but it just wouldn't get read as much.

Free Republic? Little Green Footballs? WorldNetDaily?

Re:What qualifies for a media exemption?

[conspirator57]

Hopefully just citizenship. While it's run by an individual it's constitutionally protected speech.

At some point in the muddied waters or tea leaves the government decides you're a business (say because you let an ad banner firm place ads on your site in order to defray the hosting cost, or say when you pass some number of daily readers, or say whatever, but definitely by the time you incorporate or get a business license.) This is an area the Internet has made difficult for the government and is another, broader issue entirely.

When that happens your company is categorized for a number of purposes, including taxes and business insurance. If you are a text/media content provider, then you are most likely some sort of publisher, which I think means for the FEC's purposes you are a media outlet, and thus in the same category as any other media outlet.

Besides which, the big boys selectively report and even endorse candidates. And given the economic pressure the newspapers are under, it won't be long before some of them have shrunk to the point that some former-individual-blog-turned-opinion-site (Drudge, anyone?) is bigger than them. Will there then be calls to strip that newspaper of their media credentials or FEC exemption?

Besides, many newspapers are divesting their printing press and contracting with a larger regional paper for printing. At what point is a paper no longer a paper?

Likewise, there are some individuals who have their own papers published (call them crackpots if you want, but remember that's how many of our more venerable papers started.)

How will you distinguish between "legitimate" media and the rest? Is it a worthy expenditure of government resources? Does it violate the rights of those determined not to be "press"?

The best solution is for the government to leave it alone and let the economy sort it out, which surprisingly enough is what the FEC chose to do. That's what we have a "free" market for, right? Oh, yeah it isn't free: it's mercantilism.

And until it isn't mercantilism we'll have people and companies calling for discrimination in order to protect larger businesses.

Re:What qualifies for a media exemption?

[Original Replica]

"press" as defined under federal law is extremely broadly defined.

Given how influential Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" pamphlets were in spreading the movement towards the Revolution, I would think that one sided, heavy handed, idealogical rantings would be Constitutionally protected. DailyKos is the modern day equivalent of the political pamphlet, and should be protected as such. If there is going to be any kind of strong Democratic leadership/ideology to emerge places like the DailyKos are going to be important in sorting out a unified Democratic vision. Right now the only thing they have going for them is that they aren't the Republicans. That lack of cohesiveness and vision is how Kerry lost in 2004.
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestone s/commonsense/

Also in the case of a presidential election

[Sycraft-fu]

A serious third party contender actually brings up the risk of congress deciding the election. If you check the Constitution, you find that to win a presidential election, a candidate must receive a majority of the electoral votes. Now some people think "majority" means "most". It doesn't in this context, actually, it means more than 50%. Currently, that's 270 electoral votes. If nobody gets 270 or more it doesn't go back for a second try or anything like that, rather the electoral vote isn't what decides the president. Instead, the House of Representatives elects the president, and the Senate elects the vice president.

Yes, really, it's happened twice before.

Well when there's only two candidates, it is extremely likely one will get a majority of votes. Since there is an even number of electors it is possible for a split EC, but that's quite unlikely. However with a serious third contender, it becomes much more possible. The third contender doesn't have to be more popular than the two others, just popular enough to grab some electoral votes.

For example suppose you have a race with the typical Democrat and Republican, but also a non-crazy Libertarian (I know, seems to be an impossibility). The Republican is the more popular than the Democrat, but only by a small margin. Let's say it would work like the 2004 election and result in a 286-252 win for the Republican. However the Libertarian manages to woo some of the fiscal conservatives to his side instead. Not very many, but enough to win Arizona, Kentucky and South Dakota. Now instead it's a 267-252-19 setup. The Republican has the most votes, but it isn't enough. Nobody wins, and it goes to Congress to decide.

As such at a presidential level, it's extremely stacked for a two party system. On other levels where it's a pure popular, who ever gets the most gets the job system, it is easier and indeed third party candidates to win from time to time. But it's a real problem in the presidential election. I mean look at how wound up people got about a president winning the electoral vote without winning the popular vote (also has happened before). Think the fury a congressional election would generate.

Mod Parent Up...

[Penguinisto]

If I had one I'd certainly drop it off here.

Partisanship, Fox-hatred and left v. right wing BS arguments aside, at least Fox News does go out of their way to provide two opposing viewpoints, and it seems rather popular. Sure, folks will immediately scream about Colmes' "moderate" tag, but honestly, that's nothing more than spin on Colmes' part (so as to paint his opposite as "extreme").

I have yet to see a credible truly-moderate opinionator (why? because 'beige' simply doesn't attract the attention that red or blue does, ne?) So please, let's dispense with any such notion that Colmes (or Kos, or whomever of any political stripe) is "moderate" - it's a strawman argument, to put it charitably.

Kos is nothing more than a prettified version of the Democratic Underground, IMHO. I wouldn't be surprised to see lots of left-leaning money being fed to his site, just as I wouldn't be surprised to see lots of right-leaning money being fed to his opposite counterparts' sites.

Both sides have their shills; both sites exist to feed the confirmation biases of their respective True Believers(TM, pat. pending).

That said, I wish everyone luck in removing the political money-laundering that accompanies sites like Kos. His income (again, like that from various others of either side) is likely funneled through a series of front organizations and companies who essentially parallel a given party's agendae (e.g. George Soros' funding of various 'grass-roots' events).

If you want to seriously remove political money from such events, then have the gov't set up a series of servers, where any political party can have equal bandwidth and space to proclaim whatever political theories turn them on (in a limited but equally accessible set of formats - text and image/multimedia files under a certain size, ferinstance). Sort of like a "Speakers' Corner" of sorts. It's not like they can't afford it or anything.

/P

Re:Mod Parent Up...

[Raul654]

"Partisanship, Fox-hatred and left v. right wing BS arguments aside, at least Fox News does go out of their way to provide two opposing viewpoints, and it seems rather popular."

This is bull shit of the most dangerous kind. It was Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister, who said that the key to a successful propaganda campaign is to give the appearance of diversity, while at the same time making sure that all media venues convey the same basic message. This is the essence of framing the debate. You take a moderate, call him a liberal, and voilà - you've manufactured diversity where, in fact, none exists. Meanwhile, people who truly disagree never get heard. Nor is this just an accident. They intentionally select weak voiced, barely (if at all) left-of-center people.

But don't take my word for it. Just read the transcript from Outfoxed. According to former Fox News producer Clara Frenk: And the first thing that I noticed was that I recognized all of the conservatives who were in the roster. They were very well known people who had come from, you know, talk radio or from some sort of political background, and so I knew all of those people, and they were very, very strong people... But when I looked at the liberal roster, there was only one person's name who I recognize, which I recognized, and that was Bob Shrum, who is a very well known speechwriter and political consultant in Washington. The other ones, though, were people I had never heard of. My entire background was in politics and political journalism, so I knew pretty much all the players in D.C. and I had never heard of these people... A lot of the times the liberals that they get to appear on are either, you know, faux-liberals, like, I would use Susan Estrich as an example of that, a person who was brought on, who essentially agrees with the person on the right in a lot of cases."

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.

Re:This cuts both ways

[Raul654]

Fox deserves to be singled out because the other major news outlets, including CBS, make an honest effort to be objective and non-partisan. (The fact that CBS aired a false story is significant because it is a rare occurrence; on the other hand, Fox does it on a daily basis and it's become so commonplace that it barely even registers in the media) The major media outlets may not be perfect, but they do a pretty good job of making sure they report the truth. Fox, on the other hand, is quite transparently a front for the Republican National Committee, and make no effort to be objective or non-partisan.