Beginning last Tuesday, Politico rolled out a week long video series on money and politics and CCP Founder and former Federal Election Commission (FEC) Chair Bradley Smith gave an interview wherein he took to task the idea that political ads, in the wake of 2010’s Citizens United decision, will be funded by shady groups with nefarious agendas — and that the voting public will be none the wiser. Smith sets the record straight on why more disclosure is actually tantamount to censorship in the marketplace of political ideas.
“There’s a growing body of evidence that the main reason some people want more disclosure is not so they can judge the ads themselves and judge the credibility of the ads, but precisely the opposite,” Smith said…. “They’ve already judged the ads. They’ve decided they don’t like the speaker, and what they want to do is harass and boycott and bother the speaker. And I don’t think there’s any reason why the government should be operating a system of mandatory disclosure for the purpose of helping people molest and bother and vandalize and boycott their fellow citizens for their political conversations.”
