In the News

Washington Post: D.C.’s Fair Elections Act would give more power to the powerful

By David Keating and Thomas Wheatley

The so-called Fair Elections Act of 2017, a measure that would provide a five-to-one tax financing match to small-dollar donations to D.C. candidates, cleared committee this month. The sponsor markets the proposal as “giving more people a bigger voice.”

That’s nonsense. The bill proposes a grand experiment with unpredictable impact. There’s a good chance that it will turbocharge the power of special-interest groups in D.C. campaigns, giving fewer interests a dominant voice. It also could incentivize fraud, which could lead to a collapse of public confidence.

The proposal is biased in favor of a new form of special PAC. The fine print allows for allocations from labor unions to count as contributions from individuals, and thus may be considered small-dollar donations. The provision not-so-subtly prohibits similar contributions from partnerships and small-business owners. The D.C. ACLU noted “labor unions do not have greater First Amendment rights than other kinds of organizations.” But the potential constitutional defect remains.

Washington Examiner: More campaign finance regulation means less political free speech

By Joe Albanese   

If Feingold thinks it’s unfair that some people are able to spend more money on elections, is it also unfair that some people can get more attention without spending money at all?

When ordinary people want to express their opinions alongside those of the powerful, they have to raise and spend money to do it. This doesn’t just mean buying advertising time on TV – even posting an internet video or printing fliers requires buying the right materials and equipment. Pooling resources can be an effective way to enhance the voices of ordinary Americans, but these expenses trigger government regulations when they add up.

Yet, campaign finance law only targets certain types of political participation. Before Citizens United, the Obama administration argued in court (at least for a time) that an organization could be forbidden from screening a movie criticizing a presidential candidate. A celebrity or politician can go on TV to criticize that same candidate, however, and face no such legal obstacles. Luckily, the Supreme Court recognized that 501(c) organizations could be an important way for citizens to join together and speak about politics without needing to hire campaign finance attorneys every step of the way. The rich can hire all the help they need – grassroots activists can’t.

New York Post: An Orwellian tale of ‘campaign finance reform’

By Thomas Wheatley

Investigators from the state Department of Justice called the “previously unknown and secret investigation into a broad range of Wisconsin Republicans” John Doe III. The scheme secretly collected hundreds of thousands of Republicans’ personal emails…

The scope of John Doe III was shocking – in fact, DOJ officials could not “discern any limit” to it. More egregiously, the sleazy scheme seemed motived by partisanship…

Americans are led to believe that more government regulation of election campaign speech is key to ensuring fairness. John Doe III says otherwise.

Law-abiding citizens were exercising their free-speech rights. But that was enough for Big Brother thugs to compile a secret dossier on all aspects of their lives.

A vague and complex campaign finance law enabled these abuses. Wisconsinites learned this lesson via an especially terrifying abuse of power and reformed their laws accordingly. Other states would do well to learn from them.

Georgetown Public Policy Review: Do Taxpayer-Funded Campaigns Increase Political Competitiveness?

By Joe Albanese

Advocates of taxpayer-funded political campaigns often claim that such systems improve the political process by exposing incumbent politicians to more competition and increasing the chance that challengers will defeat them in elections. One such advocate, the Brennan Center for Justice, has argued that tax-financed campaigns “improve competition, and help challengers.”  Lower incumbent re-election rates in states that offer tax-financed campaigns would result, as competition rises.

Evidence shows no such result. The evidence available indicates that, despite claims that this policy increases electoral competition, taxpayer financing of political campaigns does not produce statistically significantly lower re-election rates for incumbent state legislators. A comparison between states with and without such laws suggests that the system of funding campaigns has no effect on re-election rates. Many factors contribute to high incumbent re-election rates across states, such as name recognition, the platform provided by elected office, and voter satisfaction with their representatives. Tax-financing of campaigns is not one of those factors.

Internet Speech Regulation

Bloomberg BNA: Regulatory Spotlight Shines on Facebook, Twitter Political Ads

By Alexis Kramer

Increased regulation of online political ads could spark free speech concerns and create burdensome liability issues for social media platforms, depending on the scope of such rules, First Amendment and election law attorneys told Bloomberg Law. Requiring online advertisers to disclose their identities could interfere with their right to anonymous political speech and may discourage internet users from buying political ads, the attorneys said. Social media platforms may find keeping track of certain ad buyers to be a daunting task, and may err on the side of disclosure if the rules are too broad, the attorneys said.

“People and platforms would be forced to anticipate whether they might be caught up in the ambit of the law,” Lawrence Walters, a First Amendment attorney at Walters Law Group in Longwood, Fla. said…

Klobuchar’s and Kilmer’s bills would require online platforms to disclose the buyer identities of ads that concern “any political matter of national importance.”

Regulation that turns on whether the ad content comprises that kind of message may chill free speech, Columbo said. “With unclear lines, or lines you need a lawyer to see, people often choose to not say what they wanted to say, or not say anything at all,” he said.

Washington Post: There’s still little evidence that Russia’s 2016 social media efforts did much of anything

By Philip Bump

The targeting of users on Facebook in particular was described in various news reports as appearing to be “highly sophisticated” – naturally raising the question of whether the Russians had been aided in their efforts.

All of that, though, requires setting aside what we actually know about the Russian activity on Facebook and Twitter: It was often modest, heavily dissociated from the campaign itself and minute in the context of election social media efforts…

The unusual possibilities offered by Facebook targeting can help contribute to the sense that the Russians did something especially clever. But there’s a difference between a sophisticated tool and sophisticated targeting. You can drive a Tesla to the grocery store, which is essentially what the Russians did in the ads released by the Democrats…

As it stands, the public evidence doesn’t support the idea that the Russians executed a savvy electoral strategy on social media to ensure Trump’s victory. In fact, it seems less the case that they did so now than seemed might be possible back in July.

IRS

Washington Post: Scandal has overwhelmed the IRS

By Editorial Board 

Conservatives who long sought to restrain the Internal Revenue Service have managed to throw a wrench into an IRS division that is supposed to regulate tax-exempt nonprofits and charities, just at a time when these groups are becoming more partisan and complex.

In a Dec. 18 article in The Post, reporter Robert O’Harrow Jr. offered a disturbing picture of the besieged Exempt Organizations division of the IRS, which regulates charities and nonprofits such as those allowed under sections 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) of the tax code…

The division seems to have lost its will to scrutinize charities. According to Mr. O’Harrow, last year the division rejected just 37 of the 79,582 applications on which it made a final determination…

There is more than enough blame to go around in this tale. The conservative groups, their allies in Congress and the IRS itself all bear responsibility. It is clear what the result will be. Voters will have less and less knowledge of who is paying for political activity in their democracy, even as many politicians hypocritically claim to favor transparency.

FCC

Washington Post: Don’t let the FCC off the hook for ‘dark money’ ads

By Henry Geller

The Dec. 30 editorial “Grinding down the IRS” soundly assessed the failure of the Internal Revenue Service “to regulate tax-exempt nonprofits and charities, just at a time when these groups are becoming more partisan,” and concluded that voters “will have less and less knowledge of who is paying for political activity in their democracy.” However, in assessing the blame for this conclusion, there was a crucial omission: the Federal Communications Commission, of which I am a former general counsel.

Under the Communications Act, broadcast viewers and listeners are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded. An FCC rule requires political and issue ads to disclose the “true identity” of the sponsors. But ads of tax-exempt entities such as Crossroads GPS and Priorities USA give no information on the true sponsors. The FCC was aware of such “dark money” ads in recent elections but took no action, on the specious claim that it was too busy; the real cause was congressional pressure. The present FCC chairman shows no interest.

Failure to obtain transparency as to donors behind campaign ads undermines the democratic process.

The Courts

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Bel-Nor man risks jail, fine over political yard signs, ACLU suit claims

By Robert Patrick

A homeowner here risks up to 90 days in jail and a fine after having been accused of having too many political yard signs, an ACLU lawsuit filed Tuesday says.

Lawrence Willson was ticketed in June for having three political signs in his yard, the suit says. After the ACLU contacted the city, an official promised to rescind the ordinance, but city officials changed it to apply to all signs, not just political signs, the suit says.

The group says that Bel-Nor bans signs on walls or in windows, and limits residents to only one sign per parcel for much of the year.

The ACLU says the ordinance could also restrict “Christmas lights, rainbow flags, and Post-it notes for the mail carrier.”

The Media

New York Times: ‘Fake News’: Wide Reach but Little Impact, Study Suggests

By Benedict Carey

[T]he first hard data on fake-news consumption has arrived. Researchers last week posted an analysis of the browsing histories of thousands of adults during the run-up to the 2016 election – a real-time picture of who viewed which fake stories, and what real news those people were seeing at the same time.

The reach of fake news was wide indeed, the study found, yet also shallow. One in four Americans saw at least one false story, but even the most eager fake-news readers – deeply conservative supporters of President Trump – consumed far more of the real kind, from newspaper and network websites and other digital sources.

While the research can’t settle the question of whether misinformation was pivotal in the 2016 election, the findings give the public and researchers the first solid guide to asking how its influence may have played out.

Independent Groups

Campaign Legal Center: Three Money in Politics Trends You May Have Missed in 2017

By Maggie Christ and Brendan Fischer

2017 saw the creation of a multi-million-dollar dark money policy apparatus expressly tied to the White House.

Groups with names like America First Policies openly acknowledge that they are working with the administration while spending millions lobbying for the president’s political and policy interests. Most problematically, they keep their donors hidden from the public.

America First Policies “exists for one reason: to support the president of the United States and his agenda,” according to the group’s president…

Part of the logic behind allowing super PACs to raise and spend unlimited amounts is the assumption that donors give to support the PAC’s mission and message, rather than to buy influence with candidates. Since Citizens United, however, we’ve seen a proliferation of super PACS that are staffed by close associates of candidates, receive blessings from the campaigns they support, and spend more than ever; in the 2016 cycle, super PACs spent more than a billion dollars…

Finally, this year’s special elections brought with them not only unprecedented levels of spending but also new dark money schemes to hide the origins of election spending from voters.

The States

Wall Street Journal: The Modern Campaign-Finance Loophole: Governors Associations

By Susan Pulliam and Brody Mullins

U.S. companies have found a loophole in state campaign-finance rules by funneling donations aimed at helping candidates through the RGA and its Democratic counterpart, according to multiple former officials. Donors can’t earmark money for a particular candidate. Instead, they can simply-and legally-tell the groups they have “an interest” in a race or are making a donation “at the request” of a gubernatorial candidate, these officials say…

In about half the states with gubernatorial elections in 2018, companies can’t give directly to candidates, or are sharply limited, said Phil Cox, who was executive director of the RGA from 2011 through the 2014 election, and now advises corporations on policy and political activity. Instead, he said, “corporations give to the RGA or DGA to try to provide support to that candidate.” 

Companies can give unlimited sums to super PACs and outside groups that support candidates, but those donations are generally disclosed. Corporate donations to the governors’ associations are also disclosed, but once the money is given to campaigns or organizations supporting them, it is labeled as coming from the DGA or RGA.   

Washington Post: Ethics measure approved to be on South Dakota’s 2018 ballot

By James Nord, AP

The newly dubbed Constitutional Amendment W would tighten campaign finance and lobbying restrictions. It also would create an independent ethics commission and prevent the Legislature from altering or rejecting laws approved by voters without returning to the ballot.

The amendment would replace a voter-imposed ethics overhaul called Initiated Measure 22, the initiative that South Dakota lawmakers repealed this year…

A proposal from the South Dakota House speaker would ban out-of-state fundraising for initiatives…

The new amendment would also lower campaign donation limits. For example, it would decrease the contribution limit for a state representative from $1,000 a year from individuals to $500 per election cycle. Donations from corporations and labor unions to candidates or political parties would be banned.

Gifts from lobbyists to many public officials also would be barred. 

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Several new delegates form caucus to reduce corporate money in Virginia politics

By Patrick Wilson

Several members of the freshman class of state delegates whose historic wins stunned Virginia’s political world in November are forming a caucus intended to reduce corporate money in state politics.

Members agree to vote as a bloc on campaign finance reform and consumer protection bills, and agree not to take contributions from public-service corporations – things like electric and telecom companies and railroads. A political action committee attached to the People’s Caucus does not accept contributions from corporations, only from individuals…

Del.-elect Debra Rodman, D-Henrico, a caucus member who unseated Republican Del. John M. O’Bannon III, said in a statement that even though she won’t take campaign money from public-service corporations, she still wants to work closely with companies like Dominion Energy.

“The People’s Caucus speaks to the key issues of our time, bringing power back to the people, like voter rights, transparency, and campaign finance reform,” Rodman’s statement said.

Los Angeles Times: For a prominent California consumer group and savvy political consultants, documents reveal a close financial relationship

By John Myers

If there’s a clear mantra for Consumer Watchdog, one of California’s most visible and vocal advocacy groups, it’s that hidden financial relationships shouldn’t shape politics and public policy.

The Santa Monica-based nonprofit has spent more than three decades reprimanding politicians and interest groups for doing the bidding of those who give them money. Its official motto is “expose, confront, change.”

“We are loud, and we speak more of a populist truth than the way people usually talk to each other in Sacramento,” said Jamie Court, Consumer Watchdog’s president.

That voice, though, is funded by donors who are largely shielded from public view. Some of its money, according to a Los Angeles Times review of federal tax documents, was donated through a nonprofit operated at the time by Chris Lehane, an influential political strategist and corporate consultant.