Supreme Court
Helena Independent Record: U.S. Supreme Court declines to take up Montana campaign finance case
By Holly K. Michels
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a case challenging Montana’s campaign contribution laws.
The court noted without dissent to not hear the case, brought by Doug Lair, represented by the Bobb Law firm. In the case, Lair argued that Montana’s campaign contribution limits, which are among the lowest in the country, are unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court’s decision marks the end of Lair’s efforts to defeat Montana’s campaign contribution limits. In 1994 through a citizen’s initiate, voters choose to enact limits on what individuals, political committees and politics parties can contribute to candidates.
These limits have been challenged many times, including once during the 2016 elections when the limits were struck down as unconstitutional but later reinstated.
The state Commissioner of Political Practices office released a statement after the ruling. The commissioner was a defendant in the suit.
“Montana’s limits leave candidates with the ability to conduct an effective campaign for office,” said the Commissioner of Political Practices’ chief legal counsel, Jaime MacNaughton. “Our limits allow individuals to associate with the candidate of their choice through their own speech, volunteering, discussing their merits with their neighbors, and through making their voice heard at the ballot box. Montana secured a victory today for transparency and accountability in our government and elected officials.”
The Courts
Washington Post: Revelations about Manafort’s 2016 interactions with Russian associate show special counsel’s intense focus on Russia contacts
By Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger
New revelations about Paul Manafort’s interactions with a Russian associate while he was leading President Trump’s campaign provide a window into how extensively the special counsel has mapped interactions between Trump associates and Russians in his 20-month-long investigation.
When Manafort pleaded guilty in September to federal crimes related to his work advising Ukrainian politicians, Trump said the admissions by his former campaign chairman had “nothing to do” with the special counsel’s main mission, which Trump described as “looking for Russians involved in our campaign.”
But new details inadvertently revealed in a court filing last week – including the fact that Manafort shared polling data about the 2016 race with an associate who allegedly has ties to Russian intelligence – indicate that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has also been scrutinizing interactions between Russians and Manafort while he led Trump’s presidential bid.
Manafort is among at least 14 Trump associates who interacted with Russians during the campaign and transition, according to public records and interviews.
The new examples of Manafort’s communications serve as a reminder that much about Mueller’s findings remains unknown in what are widely believed to be the closing weeks of his probe.
Advisers to Trump are bracing for a final report by the special counsel, a confidential document summarizing his findings that they say could be turned over to senior Justice Department officials next month.
Congress
Slate: The House Democrats’ Colossal Election Reform Bill Could Save American Democracy
By Richard L. Hasen
The provisions in H.R. 1 related to campaign finance would expand disclosure rules to cover ads on the internet, a step that is necessary to better track attempted foreign influence over elections; establish a small-donor multiple match public financing system for Congress and a similar fix to the now-moribund presidential public financing system; create a pilot program for the use of campaign finance vouchers in congressional elections, a move I have long supported; enact a new set of rules to make sure that super PACs do not coordinate with candidates; and reconfigure the Federal Election Commission, with an odd number of commissioners and a requirement that at least one of the commissioners not be a Democrat or Republican…
There is a portion declaring support for D.C. statehood and for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court case freeing corporate money in elections.
There’s no question that H.R. 1, if it passes the House, will go nowhere in the upper chamber. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, an ardent opponent of laws regulating money in politics told the New York Times that he believes much of the law is “probably” unconstitutional…
The court could find some of the rules on campaign coordination and spending to violate the First Amendment, even though Citizens United’s holding was premised on the idea that independent spending required strict rules barring coordination between candidates and outside groups.
Deadline: Oscar-Shortlisted Documentary ‘Dark Money’ Lands Support From U.S. Senator
By Matthew Carey
[Senator Jon] Tester turned out in support of the Oscar-shortlisted documentary Dark Money at a CAA screening that drew a standing room-only crowd. The film directed by Kimberly Reed, a fellow Montanan, investigates the pernicious role of untraceable cash flooding U.S. elections…
“I can’t tell you how many dollars of dark money came into my state yet,” [Tester] told the audience during a Q&A. “And we may never know how many dollars came into the state. If it was for me or against me, it’s the same.” …
In an exclusive interview with Deadline, Tester added, “The truth is there were flyers, there were telephone calls and there was a lot of money spent. What the advocates of Citizens United will say is [dollars] were spent to try to inform the voter. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It was spent to try to confuse the voter so when they went to the polls they wouldn’t know who to vote for.” …
Among the characters in Reed’s film, along with Sen. Tester, is Ann Ravel, a former Democratic commissioner of the Federal Election Commission. She also participated in Monday night’s Q&A…
“Once there’s either more of the constitutional amendments or statutory changes in states and in local governments,” she commented, “it’s going to be a way to convince congress-hopefully, to be optimistic-that they need to pass these kinds of rules too.” …
Tester is less than optimistic about the prospect of shedding light on dark money.
“I am not hopeful because (Sen.) Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, is ardently against any sort of transparency in money that’s pumped into campaigns. He can stop any bill from coming to the floor,” he states. “But that doesn’t mean you quit fighting. Keep fighting, keep trying to do the right thing because transparency in government is a good thing and funding of campaigns is part of government. So we need to make it more transparent.”
Online Speech Platforms
Wall Street Journal: Reid Hoffman’s Fake News
By Editorial Board
Russian internet trolls worked overtime in 2016 to inject disinformation into American elections. A year later, as news reports now reveal, Democratic operatives, some funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, tried out these same tactics to boost Senator Doug Jones in Alabama…
Mr. Jones sent the Federal Election Commission a letter Wednesday urging an investigation “to determine if any federal election laws were violated and, if so, to impose the maximum penalties.” But lying in elections generally isn’t illegal, so long as the spending on it is properly disclosed and reported.
Social-media websites have stepped up their efforts to ferret out this kind of abuse. After 2016, Facebook tightened the rules around political advertising…
Much of what’s at issue here, however, isn’t advertising. Political operatives set up social-media pages, attracted audiences, and then inserted anti-Moore ideas. Facebook prohibits this kind of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” and has closed five accounts related to the Alabama operation. Yet the initial deception is enabled by the internet’s core features: anonymity and user-generated content…
One way to discourage such shenanigans is to put election spending back in the hands of candidates and political parties. Hard donation limits, meant to cure the appearance of corruption, have shunted money to outside groups, which are far less accountable. Would Mr. Hoffman have funded these high jinks if he were able to write the Jones campaign a $100,000 check? Our guess is probably not…
Censorship and regulation-the federal Department of Social Media-isn’t the answer. That would put politicians in control of political speech. It will be up to voters, as it always has been, to separate false and misleading claims from the truth.
Reason: The ‘Fake News’ Epidemic Was…Fake News
By Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Most social media users still know bullshit when they see it, a new study suggests. In a study of social media behavior during the 2016 election, more than 90 percent of their sample “shared no stories from fake news domains,” a trio of researchers reports in Science Advances…
While much has been made over Russian-backed bots and ads promoting propaganda content, the reach and influence of such misinformation attempts may have been greatly overstated. The researchers say it’s “farfetched” to suggest that fake news-which they define as “fake or misleading content intentionally dressed up to look like new articles, often for the purpose of generating ad revenue”-had a strong impact on the election’s outcome.
It’s “important to be clear about how rare this behavior is on social platforms,” they write.
“The vast majority of Facebook users in our data did not share any articles from fake news domains in 2016 at all,” the study notes. Furthermore, “this is not because people generally do not share links: While 3.4% of respondents for whom we have Facebook profile data shared 10 or fewer links of any kind, 310 (26.1%) respondents shared 10 to 100 links during the period of data collection and 729 (61.3%) respondents shared 100 to 1000 links.”
Among respondents for whom they had the appropriate data, only 8.5 percent shared any fake news pieces. About 18 percent of the Republican respondents shared at least one fake news article, as did 3.5 percent of Democrats.
Candidates and Campaigns
CNN: Democrats are denouncing big money. But they are powerless to stop it in 2020.
By Fredreka Schouten and Dan Merica
Swearing off super PACs headed into 2020 is “like bringing a butter knife to a gun fight,” said Dallas lawyer Marc Stanley, who raised money for President Barack Obama and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Stanley also helped create a super PAC that attacked Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz on the airwaves during the 2018 Senate campaign, despite Democratic nominee Beto O’Rourke disavowing such groups.
“I would prefer that we had public funding of campaigns or just small donors funding campaigns,” Stanley told CNN this week. “But it’s just not reality. We need to be prepared to fight. The consequences of this election are just too great.”
A number of likely candidates are renouncing super PACs and direct donations from corporate political actions committees…
This week, aides to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who recently kicked off a presidential exploratory committee, upped the demand that Democrats reject super PACs and self-funding candidates, blasting out a campaign email that urged rivals “to show some moral backbone.” …
Steve Elmendorf, a veteran Washington lobbyist who raised money for Clinton and served as a senior aide in Democrat John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, said pragmatism, rather than lofty principles, likely will govern how much candidates rely on super PACs and the fundraisers who “bundle” together campaign donations.
“If you are a senator or a governor who has no proven record of raising online money, you’re going to need some bundlers to get you going on the ground in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.”
“Not to be cynical, but I think people adjust to the situation at hand,” Elmendorf told CNN. “Elizabeth Warren doesn’t need a super PAC. She’s a proven online fundraiser. Some other people may.”
Internet Speech
Wall Street Journal: Google Nears Win in Europe Over ‘Right to Be Forgotten’
By Sam Schechner
Google and other search engines shouldn’t be forced to apply the European Union’s “right to be forgotten” beyond the bloc’s borders, an adviser to the EU’s top court said Thursday, citing a potential threat to free expression.
The recommendation, if followed by the EU’s Luxembourg-based Court of Justice, would be a major victory for Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., which for three years has been fighting an order from France’s privacy regulator to apply the EU principle globally.
At issue in the case is the right, established by the court in 2014, for EU residents to demand that search engines remove links containing personal information-such as a home address-from searches for their names. Under the 2014 ruling, search engines must balance those requests against the public’s right to access a link associated with the searched-for name, taking into account, for instance, whether the person is a public figure.
Maciej Szpunar, an advocate general for the court, argued in Thursday’s nonbinding opinion that if the EU orders removal of content from websites accessed outside the region, there is a danger that other jurisdictions would use their laws to block information from being accessible within the EU.
“There is a real risk of reducing freedom of expression to the lowest common denominator across Europe and the world,” Mr. Szpunar wrote.
Backed by an array of free-speech advocates, Google has taken a similar position, arguing that expanding the territorial scope of the right to be forgotten would infringe on other countries’ sovereignty and encourage dictators and tyrants to assert control over content published beyond their countries’ borders. The EU’s executive arm also argued in September that the right shouldn’t be extended overseas.
The States
Star Tribune: Editorial counterpoint: In thinking of disclosure laws, don’t forget the value of anonymous speech
By Daniel N. Rosen
The Jan. 9 editorial, “Add transparency on campaign ads,” contributed an important voice to the debate over compelling disclosure of the identities of supporters of advocacy organizations that seek to persuade voters. In the four years since Gov. Mark Dayton appointed me to the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, I have consistently taken a different position.
Anonymous speech is deeply ingrained in our American democratic tradition. American democracy not only permits anonymous speech, it depends upon it.
Anonymous speech was critical to the establishment of our democracy. Thomas Paine wrote “Common Sense” anonymously; the pamphlet reached and influenced a greater percentage of the population than the TV ads we see in our election seasons today – and certainly with greater impact.
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison anonymously wrote the Federalist Papers, the influential articles advocating adoption of the Constitution.
Anonymous speech also has been important in ensuring that the benefits of our democracy extend to all Americans. In the 20th century, civil-rights opponents often sought to deprive civil-rights advocates of anonymity in order to bring commercial and social pressure upon them.
Recognizing that the real purpose of identifying those who associate with political advocacy groups is often to chill their free expression, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that anonymous speech is essential to our freedom…
History teaches that broadly accepted ideas that are held dear, and even taken for granted, in one generation often could only be espoused under the protection of anonymity in a previous generation.
Let’s protect anonymous speech, not weaken a fundamental freedom on which our democracy has been based.
Wall Street Journal: State Street: Albany Lawmakers Eye Campaign Finance Reform, but Activists Want More
By Jimmy Vielkind
About 30 progressive activists rallied at the Capitol before lawmakers opened their sessions last week. They were part of the Fair Elections for New York coalition, a group of 175 labor unions, good-government advocates and progressive groups pushing for a system, similar to what exists in New York City, where small donations are multiplied with public money.
On Friday, a group of 80 business and academic leaders, including Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, hedge-fund manager Jonathan Soros, developer Jeff Gural, telecom executive Leo Hindery, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and actor Alec Baldwin wrote to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders urging them against a nibbling approach to bring about changes.
“We do not doubt that you will face pressure to take democracy reform in small steps. We urge you not to rest at remedial measures, but rather to cut a path the nation can follow,” wrote the group, NY LEAD, which was organized with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law…
[On Monday, legislators] plan to take up one campaign-finance measure: a bill that would require greater disclosure of the individuals behind political contributions from limited liability companies and cap an LLC’s aggregate giving to $5,000 per year.
New Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins has previously sponsored bills on public campaign finance. They haven’t been a priority for her fellow Democrat, Carl Heastie, and haven’t come up in the Assembly since he was elected speaker in 2015. Mr. Cuomo will include a system of public campaign finance when he proposes his state budget on Tuesday, according to senior adviser Rich Azzopardi, as he has for the last six years…
“We look forward to working with them to go further and enact public campaign financing, make Election Day a state holiday and ban corporate contributions once and for all.”
New Jersey Star-Ledger: Moment arrives to reveal dark money donors
By Tom Moran
A strong bill to pry open the books of dark money funds is suddenly on a fast-track for approval in both the Senate and Assembly, after collecting dust for more than two years. Gov. Phil Murphy says he supports the bill as well.
What changed? It would be nice to think that these guys had a sudden change of heart. But the truth is a bit darker. Both Murphy and Senate President Steve Sweeney were embarrassed by their reliance on these funds in two separate incidents this month…
Now, Murphy and Sweeney need to do some penance, and the pending bill was just the thing. Sponsored by Sen. Troy Singleton, D-Burlington, and Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker, D-Mercer, the bill would put New Jersey on an equal footing with states like Connecticut and New York. It would force dark money funds like 501c4’s to reveal their donors and expenses.
Sweeney said he wants to modify the bill to include money spent trying to influence the operations of government, not just campaigns. He also wants to make it retroactive to the start of 2018, a legally questionable move. Both changes deserve close scrutiny. Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, said he supports the original bill in principle, and it studying those changes.
Hearings are expected soon, with a possible vote in both houses at the end of this month. That’s lightning speed by Trenton standards. To avoid mistakes, it’s vital that the committees call Jeff Brindle, of the Election Law Enforcement Commission, who has pushed for this change for years and helped the sponsors craft the bill; and representative of the Brennan Center for Justice, a leading national voice for campaign finance reform, whose people also helped in the crafting.
Portland Tribune: Campaign finance reform challenge on City Council agenda
By Jim Redden
The constitutionality of the campaign finance reform measure approved by Portland voters would be tested in court under an ordinance to be considered by the City Council on Wednesday…
[A] similar measure approved by Multnomah County voters was ruled to violate the free speech protections in the Oregon Constitution by a Multnomah County judge.
The council will consider an ordinance to enact the city’s reform measure on Jan. 16. But the ordinance also authorizes the City Attorney’s Office to initiative a “validation action” in Multnomah County Circuit Court to determine its constitutionality. That was the process that ended up striking down the county measure.
Reforms approved by Portland voters included limiting campaign contributions and spending. The council had previously adopted a public campaign financing program that is in the process of being implemented.
