Democrat efforts to censor political posts, even free ones, picked up support from foreigners, liberals and a Clinton-linked legal group in a rulemaking comment period that ended Monday.
Leading the proponents is the German Marshall Fund, a transatlantic cooperation group initially funded by Germany and now backed by many governments and corporations.
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In their letter to the FEC, which is mulling major changes to online political ads and discussion, the fund decried foreign influence, specifically from Russia, in the 2016 campaign.
“Other governments hostile to the United States are watching and learning lessons from Russia’s actions — and our response or lack of a serious response. Now that the Russian Federation has shown the way, it is highly likely that other foreign actors will follow suit in the future,” it said.
Warned one elections law expert, “I’m not sure that most Americans would appreciate a foreign-connected entity leading the charge to regulate their Internet freedoms.”
A prominent legal group, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, led by a former Bill Clinton speechwriter, also called for FEC regulations. It wants free political posts added to those that already require the disclosure of who is paying.
It wrote:
Expand the definition of “public communication” to cover significant expenditures on messages posted to the web for free. Social media websites allow free dissemination to vast audiences of any type of message. Political operatives can make large expenditures to produce content—whether production costs for filming a video, or polling costs for messaging research—but pay nothing to distribute the content to millions. Under the current regime, none of those productions costs must be reported if the content is posted for free. The Commission should include within the definition of public communication messages on the internet that were either posted for a fee or had significant production costs. The rules for electioneering communications provide an analogous example of a requirement to count production costs toward a regulatory spending threshold.
And the Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation seeks to regulate the Internet to prevent racially-motivated voter suppression tactics.
It remains unclear if the FEC will move on the demands because it is split on the issue. Conservatives have long warned that liberals and Democrats favor censoring or regulating right-leaning speech and web sites, including some news sites like the Drudge Report, and are unlikely to put any restrictions on the web.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
