Surfing the web yesterday I notice a George Will op-ed entitled Speechless In Seattle, in which he sounds another warning about how campaign finance laws are making mockery of the First Amendment. Perhaps the partisan abuse of these laws by Doyle’s State Election Board appointees has local bloggers primed to magnify the warning as Dad29 and the Texas Hold 'Em Blogger and Charlie Sykes all relay the message.
George Will highlights a State of Washington lawsuit against two Seattle Talk Radio hosts. Local hostess extraordinaire Vicki McKenna spoke about this case a year ago prompting me to write about the ominous ruling against KVI Radio. A Judge rules the station “must report the airtime of two talk show hosts as in-kind political contributions”.
July 11, 2005: The key phrase is “money or its equivalent”, because once campaign finance regulates not only money but anything that can be expressed in terms of money, then government has the power to regulate virtually all activity.
In other words talk is money and money can be restricted, therefore, free speech can be controlled and limited to the satisfaction of the government. To their immense credit KVI refuses to be silenced, appealing all the way to the State Supreme Court. The hearing on Case No. 3 - 77966-0 San Juan County v. No New Gas Tax was Thursday, June 8, 2006 and now almost four months later the Court has yet to rule.
Abusing Election Laws to Prevent Competition: Election laws exist to ensure orderly voting and vote counting and to facilitate a democratic process that helps citizens choose their officials. Increasingly, however, election laws are being used not to achieve either of these ends but rather to reduce competition and deprive voters of choices.
Elections should be decided by voters in November, not by lawyers and judges in August. For the past six years much attention has been focused on improving the mechanics of voting and on calls for redistricting reform. But another important way to ensure that voters, rather than courts, choose our leaders is to demand election laws that are no more extensive in their reach than absolutely necessary. A comprehensive review of election laws that serve no compelling state interest would be a good place to start in 2007.
