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Campaign Finance Meets the Web

Posted by michael on from the and-neither-is-happy dept.

tristan writes "According to the Federal Election Commission expressing your political views on a personal web site constitutes a campaign contribution. How big a contribution? You can start tallying it up by adding up the cost of the server hardware and software. If it's over $1,000, you need to register as a political action committee! The ACLU has a story here. "

The ACLU's solution to the campaign finance mess is to advocate more public funding of elections. Are there other solutions? I'm interested to hear what slashdot readers have to say.

1 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. campaign finance is free speech by MattMann · · Score: 5
    Of course advocating for a candidate is covered by campaign finance laws. Limiting campaign financing is limiting speech, equals-equals it's censorship.

    It is a widely held populist belief that if we allow big money, then the rich will control everything. The proper ACLU-approved response to this is it doesn't matter, free speech is absolute and the proper rational response to this is it doesn't matter because it's not true.

    The reason that free speech is important is that ideas are important and it's important to hear all sides and judge. Everybody gets to vote, rich or poor, nobody's taking that away. Yes, if unlimited free speech is allowed (yay!) then the rich will get more of it, but they already have more of it, campaign finance law has not and will never change that, and it's specious anyway because rich people come from all parts of the political spectrum too, from BarbAra Streisand to Charlton Heston. In fact, it is easier for the little guy, a dark horse candidate to convince a few rich people to support him/her than it is for that candidate to pound the pavement and fly all over the country raising peanuts here and there and ultimately getting nowhere. That's how George McGovern got in. It's only nowadays after we've had campaign spending limits lots of good candidates are complaining that they can't raise enough money.

    When speech is controlled by the government, that's when you lose freedom. Campaign finance law is part-and-parcel of dictatorship, as is public financing. If we were to get public financing, do you think any current office holders or entrenched civil servants will not use it to their own advantage?

    And, right back on topic, if you attempt to limit free speech/spending speech you are always going to get people figuring out how to get around it as we saw with PACs, soft money, private individuals running advocacy ads (banned) and private individuals setting up private websites (which has to be banned for the same reason).

    The answer is simple: stop limiting free speech, whatever form it takes, and how ever much it costs.

    Of course, I feel compelled to add, sometimes free-speech (in the form of campaign shindigs) does equal free-beer if you can wangle an invitation.