Coyote Blog

The Arizona Republic noted today:

In a historic move, the Citizens Clean Elections Commission voted
Thursday to oust state Rep. David Burnell Smith from office for
overspending his public campaign limits by more than $6,000.

The 5-0 vote marks the first time in the United States that a
legislator has been ordered to forfeit his office for violating a
publicly financed election system.

I don't know anything about Mr. Smith, so I don't know if I would agree with any of his politics or not -- I suspect though that he and I would not see eye to eye on a number of issues.  This case nevertheless leaves me with mixed feelings.

On one side, Mr. Smith signed on to the clean elections program (he doesn't have to) and accepted public funding, and thereby accepted spending limits.  He was obviously sloppy (as a minimum) in his accounting, or at worst flaunted the restrictions.

However, on the opposite side, I hate this type of campaign law. I don't like any restrictions on spending, which equate to limitations on first amendment speech rights.  I don't even like voluntary programs like this, because they use public money - read that as MY money - to finance candidates and viewpoints that I don't necessarily agree with.  In these voluntary programs, candidates are effectively being offered a publicly funded bribe to waive their first amendment rights, as argued in this suit.  I don't like seeing this next step in the arms race to limit political speech.  The ability of an unelected commision of busybodies and nitpickers to actually invalidate free elections and toss out elected officials merely because they used $6000 too much free speech is scary.  Would anyone in their right mind wish to grant this power to the FEC?

By the way, the language in the Republic article is funny, and shows their bias in this.  Note this line, emphasis added:

The commission's vote comes after three months of scrutiny in what has
been billed as the biggest test for Arizona's popular but controversial
system of taxpayer-funded political campaigns.

Here is a hint: whenever a reporter calls a program "popular", it means that it is a program that the reporter or the paper's editorial staff supports.  It does not mean that they have polling data backing up this claim.  Don't believe me?  Then note this line from the same article:

Some commissioners admitted they were reluctant to attempt to overturn
the wishes of voters in a legislative district but said it was more
important to uphold the wishes of the state's voters, who narrowly
approved the Clean Elections initiative in 1998.

Ahh, so this "popular" program was only "narrowly approved".  In fact, I looked it up.  Smith won his election by a far larger margin of victory than did the Clean Elections initiative.  Should the AZ Republic be calling him the "popular" legislator? 

We libertarians are often argue that both the left and the right are equally guilty of stepping on key freedoms.  We currently have an excellent example of that in the case of freedom of speech in broadcast media (radio and TV).

From the Right:  New initiatives to crack down on "bad language" and sexual content in broadcast media, most famously driving Howard Stern to satellite.

From the Left:  While bent out of shape about the right's crackdown on immoral speech, the left turns around and attempts a crackdown, via renewal of the Fairness Doctrine, on political speech.  See hapless John Kerry decrying loss of the Fairness Doctrine here, and a more coherent history here.

Can't we just agree to allow everyone free speech and turn off what we don't want to hear?

Support for free speech is generally tested at the margins -- everyone supports free speech for themselves, but the real challenge is to support free speech for your enemies.  It is for this reason that I force myself not to get worked up about the American Nazi party adopting a highway in Oregon.  LGF is wrong in this post to cheer the illegal removal of this sign.  And a state government cannot be put in the position of screening out groups eligibility based on their political views - where would it stop?

Besides, since Nazis unfortunately don't seem to be going away, what better use for them than cleaning litter off of highways?

Update:

The next step on the slippery slope.

It has always been ironic to me that those who started the "free speech" movement of the 60's have been in the forefront of clamping down on campus speech via speech codes.  The answer to this paradox was that the free speech movement was never about free speech, but about advancing a mostly Marxist point of view to the exclusion of all others.

FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, has a nice roundup of work they have done to defend free speech on campuses in 2004.  Hat tip to Virginia Postrel.

Europe has never had the strong tradition of or protection of free speech and press that we enjoy in the US.  For years, I have criticized the use of libel laws in Europe to stifle speech -- similar things are attempted in the US, but seldom get very far in the courts.

Now comes this proposal (courtesy of Captains Quarters):

The Council of Europe has called on its 46 member-states to introduce legislation on the right of reply to correct false information on online media.

It said the Committee of (Foreign) Ministers, executive of the European human rights watchdog body, had adopted a recommendation on the right to reply for online Internet media.

This recommended that members consider introducing legislation on the "right of reply or any other equivalent remedy, which allows a rapid correction of incorrect information in online or off-line media......"

Fortunately, our government does not have any legal or constitutional right of reply in any media, though the implications for the Internet are interesting since about 20% of my readers are in Europe, if you can trust my referral logs.  So lets give it a test:  the EU is a bureaucratic, statist nightmare.  There, lets see if that gets a response.