Supreme Court
American Thinker: Dressing Down Minnesota over its Dress Code for Voters
By Wen Fa
When you show up to vote in the North Star State, you are forbidden from wearing any apparel with a design, logo, or slogan with even the slightest hint of a political connotation, even if the slogan doesn’t have anything to do with a candidate or ballot measure.
Specifically, Minnesota law bans clothing with any “political badge, political button, or other political insignia” at polling places, on pain of criminal prosecution and civil fines up to $5,000…
Minnesota resident Andy Cilek found out the hard way in 2010. . . His T-shirt displayed an image dating back to the American Revolution — the Gadsden Flag, with its coiled snake and the warning to British forces, “Don’t tread on me.”…
Ruling 2-1 against Cilek, a panel of the Eighth Circuit held that Minnesota’s ban on “political” attire is a reasonable way to protect voters from intimidation by candidates’ supporters…
Last week, Cilek filed his reply, the final document in his petition to the Supreme Court which will decide whether to take this case on September 26. The justices should accept this case and not just dress down Minnesota over its dress code for voters, but issue a ruling with national impact.
The Courts
Bloomberg BNA: CREW Urges D.C. Circuit to Act in `Dark Money’ Case
By Kenneth P. Doyle
A long-running challenge to the Federal Election Commission’s lack of enforcement action against a conservative campaign spending organization that received millions of dollars from undisclosed donors is set for a November argument in the (CREW v. FEC, D.C. Cir. No. 17-5049, order 9/12/17).
The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington contends that, if the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit can’t force action in this case involving the now-defunct nonprofit called the Commission on Hope, Growth and Opportunity (CHGO), there’s no hope for enforcing disclosure requirements against any of the numerous “dark money” groups that have intervened in U.S. elections since 2010…
The FEC has said in earlier court filings that it was justified in refusing to release the identities of donors to the conservative nonprofit group. Disclosing the group’s donor list, which was uncovered in an agency investigation, “would implicate serious First Amendment concerns,” according to a court brief filed by FEC lawyers…
The FEC could simply release the names of CHGO’s donors that it already possesses, CREW said in an earlier court brief.
Free Speech
The Atlantic: Should Facebook Ads Be Regulated Like TV Commercials?
By Alyza Sebenius
Tech giants like Facebook are largely left to decide for themselves how to arbitrate what is said on their platforms: what speech is permissible or not, whether to flag propaganda or not, and how to regulate advertisements. While, across mediums, it is illegal for foreigners to financially influence U.S. elections, last week’s news also means a new reckoning with the specific responsibility of tech companies to regulate the ads they sell and the content they host.
Legal and tech experts have growing concerns about individual private companies’ massive power over public discourse on the internet. The ability of any single entity to significantly arbitrate speech has previously belonged to the government alone. Now, Facebook, with a small number of its peers, has assumed much of the responsibility for regulating this influential realm online.
Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union, sees danger in steps toward censorship on social media. “We would ideally like to see companies that provide a forum in which people communicate with each other to be free-speech zones, especially companies that play important roles in our national discourse,” he said. “Once companies go down the path of engaging in censorship, line-drawing decisions are often impossible, inconsistent, capricious, or downright silly.”
Bloomberg View: We Didn’t Normalize Trump. We Normalized the Left’s Violence.
By Megan McArdle
Last week, conservative Ben Shapiro gave a speech. At Berkeley. And all across America, people watched their screens to see what sort of violence would erupt.
Reality was anticlimactic. Law enforcement was out in force, at an estimated price tag of $600,000. Concrete barriers were erected to hold back the liberal “antifa,” and police obtained permission in advance to use pepper spray. Much of campus was locked down and cleared out. Nine people were arrested. And so, Shapiro arrived, gave his speech, and departed without the mayhem we’ve become accustomed to seeing at such appearances. And collective relief was sighed.
But how relieved should we be that this is what it takes to maintain order in the face of … a speech? …
If we have to spend $600,000 to ensure that these people cannot arrogate to themselves powers we won’t even allow our government, then that’s probably a price worth paying. What we cannot afford to do is become inured to how outrageous it is. Every time it happens, we have to remind ourselves that all this security is the price we’re paying to protect ourselves from thieves who want to steal our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. And that it is possible to once again live in a world where this is not normal.
Congress
Axios: The rush – and risks – to regulating online political ads
By Sara Fischer
Lawmakers on both sides are arguing that something needs to be done in order to better track spending on digital political ads in light of recent revelations that Russian groups purchased Facebook ads during the 2016 election. Their efforts are being reinforced by the Federal Election Commission, which unanimously decided to re-open the written comment period on what sort of disclaimers internet advertising should have…
Axios spoke with nearly a dozen political ad buyers, most of whom agree that something needs to be done, but many of whom worry that lawmakers and regulators are rushing to fix a complicated, 21st Century problem with 20th Century tactics…
“No government regulator, and very few members of the media, understand how these mediums are being leveraged by campaigns,” says Zac Moffatt, CEO of Targeted Victory, the advertising agency that managed the Romney campaign in 2012 and the Cruz campaign in 2016. “It seems like we’re taking a knee jerk reaction that folks will feel better about in the short run and be totally inadequate for the complexities of the formats and targeting capabilities.”
FEC
Quartz: Meet the woman who warned about Russian election meddling years ago-and got death threats
By Heather Timmons
In October 2014, vice commissioner Ann M. Ravel wrote a statement accusing the FEC of turning a “blind eye” to the growing force of the internet in politics, and explaining the reason she and two of her co-commissioners, all Democrats, had voted for more disclosure of funding of political material on the web…
Facebook successfully argued that the company should not have to disclose who was behind political advertisements because the commission did not require political committees to include disclaimers on buttons, bumper stickers, or other small items where it “could not easily be printed,”…
Despite the backlash to her 2014 push to get Facebook and other internet companies to be more transparent about where their ad revenue was coming from, Ravel kept pursuing the issue…
In doing so, Ravel even anticipated Putin’s influence. “I mean, think of it, do we want Vladimir Putin or drug cartels to be influencing American elections?” Ravel asked in an October of 2015 meeting, while pushing for the commission to require state and local campaigns to declare foreign contributions.
The Media
Chicago Tribune: GOP governors launch ‘news’ site critics call propaganda
By Bill Barrow, Associated Press
The Republican Governors Association has quietly launched an online publication that looks like a media outlet and is branded as such on social media. The Free Telegraph blares headlines about the virtues of GOP governors, while framing Democrats negatively. It asks readers to sign up for breaking news alerts. It launched in the summer bearing no acknowledgement that it was a product of an official party committee whose sole purpose is to get more Republicans elected.
Only after The Associated Press inquired about the site last week was a disclosure added to The Free Telegraph’s pages identifying the publication’s partisan source.
The governors association describes the website as routine political communication. Critics, including some Republicans, say it pushes the limits of honest campaign tactics in an era of increasingly partisan media and a proliferation of “fake news” sites…
“They’re just seeding the ground,” said Angelo Carusone, who runs Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group. “They are repackaging their opposition research so it’s there as ‘news,’ and at any moment that publication could become the defining moment of the narrative” in some state’s campaign for governor.
The States
Detroit News: Unlimited political donations pass another hurdle
By Michael Gerstein
The Legislature gave final approval Tuesday to a plan that would allow political candidates to raise unlimited amounts of money through super political action committees.
The two-bill package passed the House in a 62-45 vote, with Democrats and some Republicans opposing the legislation. The Senate later gave it a final perfunctory approval, so it heads to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder for consideration.
Supporters say the plan updates state law to account for the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC…
The plan would create “independent expenditure committees” under state law that would have no limits on the amounts of money they raise or spend for political campaigns.
CT Mirror: Counterattack at GOP effort to repeal public financing
By Mark Pazniokas
It was clear during the debates that the Citizens’ Election Program, passed by a Democratic legislature in cooperation with Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell in 2005, was on the chopping block to save $23 million. Unknown is how deep is the desire to kill a program that has largely freed legislators of their predecessors’ reliance on lobbyist for fundraising…
The effectiveness of the program has been debated since passage, although participation by candidates of both parties is overwhelming…
But it is rife with loopholes and exceptions that undermine the $100 limit. For example, contributions of up to $10,000 can go to the state parties, which can make unlimited expenditures in support of candidates participating in the voluntary program…
The Republican budget does not raise the $250 limit on contributions to non-participating candidates for the state legislature. But, perhaps recognizing that many politicians considering runs in 2018 now have exploratory committees, it raised from $375 to $1,000 the maximum contributions to those committees.
The GOP approach would increase the reliance of the rank-and-file on legislative leaders for campaign funds. It would double what leadership and caucus committees can contribute to candidates for the Senate and the House.
McClatchy DC: New Mexico elections agency defends campaign restrictions
By Associated Press
New Mexico campaign finance regulators are sticking to conclusions that drastically limit Republican Congressman Steve Pearce’s access to federal campaign funds as he runs for governor.
Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver filed a response Tuesday to a lawsuit by Pearce that seeks access to $1 million in campaign contributions held in a federally registered account.
The Secretary of State’s Office reiterates that only $11,000 can be transferred by Pearce to his campaign for governor, based on a New Mexico law that limits campaign contributions to $5,500 for the primary and general election cycles.
Attorneys for Pearce say he followed federal limits on individual contributions that are more stringent than state restrictions.
New York Times: How Party Bosses, Not Voters, Pick Candidates in New York
By Shane Goldmacher
Election laws here grant politicians and local party bosses and county committees vast sway in picking candidates when legislators leave office in the middle of their term – whether they retire early, pass away, depart for another job or are carted away in handcuffs.
The rules are a crucial part of what empowers party bosses in a state that regularly outpaces the nation in corruption. They encourage ambitious politicians, even the most independent ones, to pledge fealty to county political leaders, lest they get passed over if and when the time comes for possible advancement…
Nearly 30 percent of the current roster of New York State lawmakers were first gifted their party nominations, according to a study by Citizens Union, a watchdog group. With so many lopsidedly Democratic and Republican districts – Democrats outnumber Republicans almost 20-to-1 in Mr. Farrell’s seat, for instance – being handed the nomination is often tantamount to being put in office. The power of incumbency means many of these legislators stick around for decades.
Los Angeles Times: L.A. school board president faces felony charges over campaign contributions
By Anna M. Phillips, David Zahniser and Howard Blume
Prosecutors accused Rodriguez of giving more than $24,000 to his own campaign, while illegally representing that the donations had been made by more than two dozen other contributors…
At the end of that reporting period, Rodriguez submitted records “certified under penalty of perjury” showing he had raised $51,001 in individual donations, the document says. “However, nearly half of the reported funds were actually Rodriguez’s own money.”
He reported his personal contribution as $1,100.
Political money laundering is prohibited in part because, as the ethics commission states, it “deprives the public of information about the true source of a candidate’s financial support.”…
Campaign consultant Mike Shimpock, whose firm has worked on L.A. Unified school board campaigns in the past, said the idea of reimbursing donors “just seems totally irrational” given the dynamics of the 2015 election.
Candidates are permitted to give as much money as they want to their own campaigns, and it was well known in December 2014 that Rodriguez was likely to receive major financial support from charter school backers, Shimpock said.
