Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission sought to regulate and block free tweets by a group trying to promote political campaigns they supported, but were blocked by anti-regulation commission Republicans.
In a memo, the three FEC Republicans said the Democrats were pushing to overturn a longstanding exemption for Internet communications set in 2006 and punish a conservative anti-abortion group for tweeting a YouTube video posted by a congressional candidate it backed, Jay Kinzler.
Facing GOP opposition, the outnumbered Democrats withdrew their regulatory effort, claiming “prosecutorial discretion,” but indicated that they could regulate other cases.
The Democrats, led by Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, have been seeking to impose new regulations on Internet campaign efforts. They believe that the FEC’s rules are outdated, especially as more campaigns move from advertising on paid media, highly regulated by the commission, to the Internet.
But the Republicans, led by Commissioner Lee Goodman, say any regulation of Internet politicking will kill the increasing public involvement and awareness of politics. He also says the regulatory efforts amount to censorship and could be extended to the media.
In the Kinzler case, a complaint to the FEC against Illinois Family Action said the tweet of a pro-Kinzler video amounted to a political contribution. The case was made that it wasn’t free because staff had to spend time and effort on the tweet.
But the Republicans – Goodman, Caroline C. Hunter, and Matthew S. Petersen — explained in their memo that there was no violation of FEC rules because the group neither paid Twitter to run its tweet nor received compensation from Kinzler’s campaign to post it.
They warned that if the case led to new regulations, it would potentially affect millions more since Twitter is used to comment on and promote political campaigns.
“Such an approach would create an internal conflict in the commission’s rules, subjected to regulation any unsuspecting person who uses a free Twitter account to send a link to a campaign video,” the GOP memo said.
Because President Trump has yet to replace a Democratic vacancy on the FEC, the Republicans hold a 3-2 majority. They used that to kill the Democrats’ effort to hold open the possibility of regulating further political tweets.
The three said such a “strained regulatory theory would chill clearly protected political speech, raise serious fair notice concerns and ultimately prove untenable. For these reasons, we voted to find no reason to believe that [Illinois Family Action] made a prohibited corporate contribution when it tweeted a hyperlink to a federal candidate’s campaign video.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
