CCP

Some FEC Commissioners Unwilling to Commit to Not Banning Books

By Joe Albanese

The Federal Election Commission’s recent public meeting revealed a partisan gap on what would have otherwise seemed a straightforward issue. Commissioner Lee Goodman proposed an amendment to expand the FEC’s “press exemption” regulation to include books, movies, and other media distributed by satellite television, radio, and internet-enabled applications. In short, Goodman wanted to reassure the public that the federal government wouldn’t be banning books or censoring documentaries anytime soon.

This provision failed in a 3-3 vote along party lines, with the Democratic commissioners signaling that they were unprepared to rule out such regulation.

Importantly, Commissioner Goodman’s proposal would not have created new law – rather, it would have clarified the scope of the already-existing press exemption, which spares media organizations from being subjected to campaign finance regulations for their speech.

Free Speech

The College Fix: YouTube blacklists PragerU educational videos

By Jennifer Kabbany

YouTube has placed 21 PragerU videos on “restricted mode,” a category meant for inappropriate and objectionable adult and sexual content.

PragerU stands for Prager University. Its four- to five-minute videos promote Judeo-Christian values and principles and are ideal for young people as they distill complex issues into concise bullet points with stimulating graphics.

“We’ve worked quietly behind the scenes for months to resolve this, but YouTube’s censorship continues, leaving us with no option but to go public,” PragerU announced Tuesday on its Facebook page.

YouTube is owned by Google, and PragerU states on its website that “in response to an official complaint we filed, Google specialists defended their restriction of our videos, and said, ‘We don’t censor anyone,’ although they do ‘take into consideration what the intent of the video is’ and ‘what the focus of the video is.'”

FEC

Washington Examiner: FEC fight over regulating internet videos heightens

By Paul Bedard

A top Democrat on the Federal Election Commission, frustrated that her efforts to regulate online political campaigns have been blocked by Republicans, is pushing for it on Twitter.

Ann Ravel, who frequently tweets about policy and her travels, on Tuesday retweeted a sharp criticism of fellow Commissioner Lee Goodman, the Republican who has helped to lead the fight against internet regulations.
“But Com. Goodman has lead a concerted fearmongering campaign against @AnnMRavel’s efforts to address online ads,” read the tweet she sent out from former FEC analyst Tyler Culberson.

His tweet was in response to a story about Republicans such as the Koch brothers using an internet “loophole” Ravel wants to close that allows unregulated online videos and promotions of campaigns and policies.

Washington Examiner: Republicans accuse FEC Dems of trying to regulate Facebook pages

By Rudy Takala

Republicans on the Federal Election Commission are accusing their Democratic counterparts of trying to open a backdoor to allow regulation of “postings and comments” on Facebook by voting to proceed with a complaint against a candidate who updated the cover photo on her site.

“The vote in this case once again reveals the sustained effort of certain commissioners to impute an in-kind monetary value to free postings on the Internet and regulate free communications,” Republican Commissioner Lee Goodman told the Washington Examiner. “The second the government attributes a monetary value to a Facebook page, it can censor that Facebook page if it deems the value exceeds a contribution limit or if the Facebook page is coordinated with a candidate.” 

Supreme Court

The New Yorker: The Supreme Court After Scalia

By Jeffrey Toobin

Democrats in the political arena have a clear target: the Court’s decision in Citizens United, in 2010…

“People use ‘Citizens United’ as shorthand for all the problems of money in politics, but in fact the decision itself had little to do with money in politics, and reversing it would do little or nothing to remove money in politics,” Pamela Karlan, a professor at Stanford Law School who also worked in the Obama Justice Department, told me. Justice Kennedy’s decision for the Court in Citizens United, though now symbolically important, held that the First Amendment prohibited the government from penalizing a nonprofit corporation that was distributing a political film during an election year.”…

Moreover, it’s largely up to Congress, not the courts, to take the first steps toward greater regulation of campaigns. “You can erase Citizens United, and nothing will change until Congress decides to regulate the super pacs and political nonprofits,” Heather Gerken, a professor at Yale Law School, said.

American Constitution Society: Putting Political Equality Before The Courts In Campaign Finance Cases

By Ron Fein

On Wednesday, Free Speech For People…filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in support of the state of Montana’s campaign contribution limits against a challenge led by noted campaign finance reform opponent James Bopp. The amicus brief advances a political equality argument.

For 40 years, the Supreme Court has looked askance at political equality as a public interest in limiting the influence of big money in politics, even as empirical research has demonstrated how political inequality harms democracy. That may be ready to change. We are excited to put the political equality argument into the courts and present the issue for potential Supreme Court consideration.

Townhall: Hillary’s Debate Answer on SCOTUS: Why She Must Be Opposed

By Guy Benson

Clinton said that she’ll appoint jurists who will overturn this 5-4 decision rendered in 2010, which affirmed that spending on political speech is, in fact, protected by the First Amendment. Clinton said she opposes the decision because we need to “get dark, unaccountable money out of our politics.” This is quite rich coming from the nominee of a party that routinely out-raises and out-spends Republicans in federal elections — and who raised $143 million in the month of August, including $21 million in one Hamptons weekend alone. This is extremely rich coming from a party that has filled its coffers with billions in political dollars from labor unions…

And one fact you never hear Hillary Clinton mention in her denunciation of Citizens United is that the particulars of the case itself involved the government’s ability to censor and ban a film that was critical of…Hillary Clinton. In oral arguments over the case, an Obama administration lawyer said that yes, campaign finance laws could be used to ban books. Hillary Clinton’s top priority on Supreme Court matters is to erode first amendment political speech protections.

Tax-Financing

Reason: If Johnson Gets 5 Percent of the Vote, Would the Libertarian Party Take FEC Money?

By Scott Shackford

In the event Johnson reaches the FEC vote threshold, Sarwark believes the most likely outcome will be that delegates to the Libertarian Party’s 2018 national convention would need to hammer out a possible bylaw about whether a potential candidate should be permitted to accept the money…

There’s a reason the Democrats and the Republicans don’t avail themselves of this money anymore. Neither party has accepted any grants for the general election as yet, and the only primary candidate to accept matching funds was Martin O’Malley.

Voluntary participation in the program has also plunged, according to the FEC, dropping from nearly 30 percent of returns in 1980 to a little over 5 percent of returns in 2015. That’s an interesting lesson right there for folks who want to demand public funding for elections. These folks aren’t putting their money where their mouths are.

Candidates and Campaigns

Observer: Team Clinton Taught Staff How to Coordinate with Super PACs Without Getting Prosecuted

By Ashe Schow

Newly released emails from Wikileaks show that Hillary Clinton’s campaign taught staffers how to coordinate with Super PACs without ending up in jail. One of Team Clinton’s top attorneys, Marc Elias, gave campaign officials two examples of how to communicate with the pro-Clinton Super PAC Priorities USA-one legal, one not…

The difference is subtle, but apparently acceptable, at least to Clinton’s lawyer. It doesn’t matter that the intent for both asks is the same (to get money from a particular person), all that apparently matters to the Federal Elections Commissions is how directly the campaign words their ask.

Attorneys from the D.C. law firm Perkins Coie also told Clinton staffers what to say when talking to donors about the Super PAC. 

Huffington Post: No, Donald Trump Isn’t Self-Funding His Campaign

By Paul Blumenthal

In the second presidential debate Sunday and at a rally Monday, Trump continued to claim that he is self-financing his campaign, unlike Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton…

The problem with Trump’s statement is that his self-financing stopped being a major part of his finances after he racked up enough primary and caucus wins to guarantee the Republican Party nomination. From June through August, Trump contributed just $6.1 million to his campaign. The rest came from donors not named Donald Trump…

Trump’s share of fundraising coming from small donors is no doubt the highest percentage for a general election presidential candidate. His problem, however, is that it is difficult to compare his fundraising to past candidates in the modern era because he has raised so little money.  

The States

Michigan Live: Elimination of expense accounts led to rise of secretive funds

By Emily Lawler

According to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, Michigan is one of 22 states that bar corporations from giving directly to candidates.

Gustafson in the 1990s set out to eliminate the officeholder expense accounts. His bill to do so became Public Act 411 of 1994.

One drawback lives on as a note in a House Fiscal Agency analysis of the bill.

“Some people have raised the concern that there will be added incentives for elected public officials to create separate unregulated foundations as an alternative to officeholder expense funds,” noted a 1995 analysis…
At first, he said, “they were very rare. Only a few people had them because they were not easy to set up and there was even some question whether the IRS was going to allow that kind of use.”

Now they’re more common — as are 527 administrative accounts, another nontaxable kind of group which can also take direct corporate contributions.

Public News Service: Political Money: “Wisconsin Darkest of All the States”

By Tim Morrissey

Because of Wisconsin’s status as a battleground state, political money is pouring into the coffers of both parties, much of it untraceable – or so-called “dark” – money.

Much of it is used to buy issue ads, which do not ask people to vote for a certain candidate but advocate a certain position. These ads, paid for with largely untraceable money, account for a significant percentage of campaign advertising. This bothers clean-government advocates such as Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin.

Under a law passed last year, Wisconsin candidates now can coordinate ad buys with outside groups, which Heck called a big problem.

“That eviscerated Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws, including meaningful disclosure,” he said. “It means Wisconsin is the darkest of all the states in the country now, in terms of the money that citizens will be able to track.”