Damn fine one at that. People decide they don’t want some forms of political speech in their house if a person has to violate another law in order to utilise that speech. There are times, places and manners in which a person is not entitled to their speech.
Slippery slope.
Amending the 1st amendment is very dangerous. All of the proposed amendments I’ve seen either contradict themselves and render the amendment legally null and void, or they grant the government broad censorship powers over political speech.
Keep in mind, folks, the Founders didn’t write the commerce clause to grant the federal government power to regulate anything tangentially connected to interstate commerce. If you give the federal government the power to regulate political speech, no matter how narrow you intend that power to be, it will grow into the power to censor nearly all speech, since a) nearly all speech that you don’t utter with your own mouth is “paid for” in some small way, and b) nearly all speech can be connected with politics if you reach hard enough.
The government already limits speech.
We had limitations on this speech before and it didn’t crash our society into the rocks.
The limits we have on speech involve speech that does substantial harm. PROVABLE harm, not the supposed harm done by campaign advertisements by third parties.
And until BCRA, we did not have political speech limitations that applied to independent advocates like the ACLU.
You can prove the 7 dirty words did actual harm to people?
Those limitations apply only to the public airwaves, and even those are under threat of being struck down. The Supreme Court declined to do so this time, but only by declining to rule on the basic doctrine of whether the FCC can censor. If they are forced to rule by the FCC overstepping, they will strike down the entire edifice.
The same thing was at work with BCRA. The first lawsuit failed because the justices wanted to see how the law would work in practice. After Citizens United basically got censored, and they weren’t even running a campaign commercial but a documentary equivlent to Fahrenheit 9/11, I don’t know what anyone expected the court to do. say it was okay for the FEC to censor anything they felt was in the public interest?
I think it’s quite ok for the public through the FEC to say “These airways belong to us and you will not use them to buy elections. You may speak by merit like any other American. Not by purchasing power.”
I agree that the public airwaves can be so restricted, but in order to survive strict scrutiny it would have to apply to all political ads, no exceptions for candidates, and it would truly have to apply only to the public airwaves. All other forms of electioneering would be unlimited, such as books, documentaries, movies, the internet, satellite, cable, and pamphlets.
I agree about books, documentaries, movies and cable(to some extent, the government/taxes generally bears the cost of maintaining cable lines), pamphlet distribution could also be limited. Any form of advertising basically anywhere. Theres no reason we can’t tell media companies that they have to survive on subscription fees. IF only political ads are being restricted it’s not even doing that so these big money donors can cry me a river and go picket or get involved individually like any other American.
Well, pamphlet distribution is covered under freedom of the printing press. And the government supporting an infrastructure doesn’t give the government license to regulate it at will. The airwaves were deemed different because bandwidth was limited. So for the privilege of access to that scarce resource, companies had to serve the public interest. There are theoretically no limits with cable or satellite to justify the same restrictions.
The 1st amendment isn’t just something that can be subordinated to the public interest as a general principle. If it was, we wouldn’t even have a 1st amendment. The idea that we can limit speech because we don’t think election campaigns are fair enough would be a dangerous new exception to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Supporters of campaign finance reform applying to independent advertising need to demonstrate a clear quid pro quo corruption problem associated with this kind of advertising, and further, they need to apply the principle to all speakers, not have two classes of speakers, favored and disfavored.
In addition, they need to address the problem that incumbents are naturally advantaged by campaign restrictions. If campaign reformers truly believe that reelecting incumbents at a 95% rate is essential to the health of our democracy, they should say that explicitly.
One other thing I think needs to be addressed, the argument that because some people have greater ability to spread their message than others, that it should be restricted in the name of fairness.
First, it’s not fair. There are many entities and individuals who can spread their message far and wide. If we limit the ability of some people who are capable of this while continuing to allow other people who are already doing it to continue to do so, then that is not fair, nor is it equal. Is Oprah Winfrey entitled to more privileges than the Kochs? Does Michael Moore have special rights that George Soros does not?
Secondly, the Constitution just doesn’t allow for the government to engage in this type of equalization, even were it possible. The government must treat everyone equally, not MAKE everyone equal. The founders were not ignorant of the fact that most people did not have easy access to the wonder of the time, the printing press. Yet they guaranteed freedom to use it in unlimited fashion, even though not everyone could do so. They would not restrict access to television or the internet either if they knew about it, even though not everyone can get on TV and not everyone has the talent to craft an awesome internet video that gets 10 million views. And I know there aren’t many calls to reduce internet advocacy yet, but that’s only because internet advocacy is still not in its mature stage. Once people start having “too much” influence on elections there will be calls to limit that influence as well.
The founders were not prophets of Jesus and the constitution is not a chapter of the bible. Argue on the merits of doing or not doing things on their own weight.
They can print as many pamphlets as they like but that don’t mean they can distribute them wherever they like with paid distributors. They want to do it personally fine.
The Constitution is the law. Nothing more and nothing less. Now if we’re talking about amending it, which some are in this thread, then yes, we can weigh the amendment process on its merits, but given that this is unlikely, it also makes sense to discuss the Constitutional considerations, because the Constitution is the supreme law of the land.
Now if we can restrict paying people to distribute pamphlets then it follows that we can restrict paying people to register people to vote.
And pamphlets aren’t only distributed by hand, they can also be published and appear in book stores or on newspaper racks. can the government limit such distribution, in your view? Should the government have this power?
Its only supreme through the supreme court’s arbitrariness. And no your logic does not follow, the government should be getting everyone to vote as much as possible. Only if the offerings are imbalanced in the communities its offered in could you argue this. Should have an ID system that allows anyone to vote on the day of the election regardless of reserving a spot on the rolls, the only reason we don’t yet is because it favors those that brought those that wrote those rules.
Displaying pamphlets in private locations is a form of advertising, if you want to have them at your charity headquarters fine, if you personally want them in your own one shop fine. There should be a universal location people can find these sorts of things if they want to find them but they shouldn’t be amplified by being in front of their daily lives by the power of money.
In regards to voter registration, we aren’t talking about the government here, but private groups registering people. And although they claim to be registering people equally, they tend to target groups more likely to support their candidate of choice, so it is a good example of money influencing politics. And probably a much bigger effect than handing out flyers has.
While how constitutional law applies to various statutes is subject to SCOTUS interpretation, the idea that the Constitution is the supreme law is undisputed. In addition, unlike many parts of it, the 1st amendment couldn’t be more clear. The 1st amendment isn’t a statement of principle or an aspiration or a long distant voice from our past. It is the law, right here and right now.
Money is the supreme law. Period. Between law and effect is so much room for muddling by bureaucrats from non-enforcement to exaggerated defense to agencies instructed not to pursue this and that and presidents deciding theyre going to do what they want and justify it later.
You’re living in fantasy land.
Slippery slope.
No, it is the guidelines for the Congress of the United States.
False dichotomy. Unlimited expenditure on electioneering communications is not an effective remedy for challenging incumbency. Term limits and proportional representation may be.
I didn’t say Congress WOULD, only that if you assume the power to restrict pamphlet or flyer distribution, then you assume the power to prevent private efforts to register voters. It could also be argued that this is properly a government function anyway.
It is actually the law, not a guideline. If it is not the law, then no one in Congress is legally elected, and the President isn’t the President.
I notice the tendency is to go towards more and more controlled democracy, which begs the question of why we wouldn’t just chuck democracy completely if we have to regulate it so strictly.
And your solution still doesn’t solve the problem. it just means that incumbents serve out their full terms rather than being turned out by the voters. And generally, the only way incumbents get turned out by voters is when third parties point out their corruption or incompetence. Neophyte challengers, even if well funded, are often ineffective at campaigning.
The proof is in the pudding. Not only did 2010 see more turnover than we’ve seen since the end of WW2, it also saw the election of a lot of people we wouldn’t normally see in Congress. As in fewer lawyers and career pols. While you’re hating the process, I’m loving the outcome. I’m interested in seeing if that trend continues over the next few cycles.
Money buying political control is controlled democracy. People voting and being represented in proportion to their wishes in the electorate IS simply democracy. No serious person discussing the issue would try to argue otherwise.
And that’s an assertion that must be proven to justify limits on speech. If money was that decisive, Democrats would still control Congress and President Obama would be ahead in the polls by 10 points. You also have to prove the quid pro quo. There is a direct link between say, direct contributions and Congressional earmarks. OpenSecrets.org recently started tracking Congressmen passing along taxpayer money to campaign contributors. But there is no clear link between independent advocacy and political favors.
As for proportional democracy, proportional how? By party? I don’t think electing parties instead of people is an improvement on our system. A system where we go from corporations being the same as people to political parties being the same as people(or actually trumping people, as they do in Britain) is not an improvement at all.