Outlawing personal political speech

Have you ever thought about using your website to campaign for your
favorite candidate? Or, perhaps, to urge the defeat of that
congressional representative who has been ignoring your letters?

Better think again.

Leo Smith of Connecticut decided he would use his business website to
do just that — urge the defeat of his congressional representative,
Republican Nancy L. Johnson. He decided to add a new section to an
already existing Internet site to advance the cause of her challenger,
Charlotte Koskoff.

Just a few days later, Smith was contacted by Koskoff’s campaign
manager. No, it wasn’t a call to thank him for his efforts. It was a
warning of legal problems he might encounter because of campaign finance
regulations.

Smith was told by the Federal Elections Commission that he was in
violation of federal law because he had spent more than $250 in
expressing his political views without disclosing his identity and
filing the required reports.

Never mind that Smith didn’t spend anything (except time) creating
the new page. The FEC, however, insisted in an advisory
opinion that the value of
the computer hardware and software is factored into its calculations. If
a computer used to express political viewpoints cost more than $250, the
FEC said, its owner would have to meet the filing requirements.

Do you believe this? For those who argue that campaign finance
restrictions do not abrogate free-speech rights, I hope this is an
eye-opener.

Now, I don’t particularly like Leo Smith’s opinions. What motivated
him to get politically involved was his irritation with a congresswoman
who voted to impeach the president — a president, I believe, who is
guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and deserves to be removed from
office for a hundred different reasons. But, as they say, I support Leo
Smith’s right to express his viewpoints. And I’ll defend that right to
the death.

“Forget about free speech,” Smith told the American Civil Liberties
Union, which has come to his aid. “If you can’t advocate what you want
for an election, that strikes at the heart of our democracy.”

No kidding. And Smith’s plight has caught the eye of some members of
Congress. Sens. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, Slade Gordon, R-Wash., and Mitch
McConnell, R-Ky., offered an amendment to the bill sponsored by Jon
McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., that would exempt from
regulation by the federal government political speech on the Internet by
individual citizens.

But that is too little, too late. What the Smith story illustrates is
that there are fundamental flaws in the whole notion of regulating the
ideas exchanged during election campaigns. No matter how you slice it,
that’s what federal campaign spending laws do.

This time, the ACLU is right. Well, not exactly right. The national
office put out a statement saying that Smith’s encounter with the FEC
“and its Orwellian mindset goes to the core of what is at stake as
Congress and the courts struggle with revising the nation’s election
laws.” But the ACLU contends the answer is more taxpayer financing of
elections.

Rather, the answer to those who say we need stricter limits on
campaign spending is that we need NO limits. Any limits are limits on
speech. You cannot divide money and speech. Money buys speech. Effective
communications requires money. It’s an illusion to pretend otherwise.

The Internet is a great equalizer. It levels the playing field in so
many ways. It allows anyone with a phone line to become a town crier
with a voice that can resonate around the world. But it’s not just the
new technology that we must consider when debating campaign spending
restrictions. If it is inherently wrong to gag speech on the Internet,
it is inherently wrong to gag it anywhere — especially political
speech.

We don’t need more government control — whether it is through
taxpayer-financed elections or limits on political speech. Either
solution spells less freedom.

What we need to do, as much as possible, is to get government’s nose
out of the election process — and, for that matter, the rest of our
public and private affairs.