Saturday, July 17, 2010

Free speech

A candidate signs up to get public financing under Connecticut's election laws and gets state funds to use in his campaign. Then his opponent spends another million dollars, and so he goes back to the state and asks for supplemental funds. The Federal courts have decided this restrains the free speech of his opponent. Funding = speech, they've decided, and if you had to worry that if you 'spoke' ie spent a million dollars and then your opponent might do the same, you might restrain your speech! So much for free speech!

That's kinda weird, hunh?

I got that from this article about recent rulings in CT:

"Supporters of the law breathed relief that the combined state and federal rulings overall preserved the basic thrust of the laws. But some expressed concern about the decision against supplemental grants. The federal panel echoed an argument offered by the U.S. Supreme Court in a recent decision involving Arizona’s public-financing law (the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case) that such supplemental grants violate a self-financing candidate’s constitutional right to free speech. Here’s the logic: If a wealthy candidate’s own campaign spending (now considered “speech”) triggers more public money for a taxpayer-financed opponent, that will affect the wealthy candidate’s decisions about how much money to dole out to broadcast a message, thereby restraining the candidate’s exercise of free speech."

There's a great new e-newsletter coming out weekly called CT News Junkie, it really helps keep tabs on state elections.

Don't forget the primary August 10th!

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