Thursday, April 14, 2005

The FEC Project: Background On What's Going On

After the much-visited Mike Krempasky post yesterday about the Reid Proposal and much heat but little light, I wanted to take a minute to explain what's going on here. In order:

  • When McCain-Feingold was passed, it didn't really mention the internet at all. So in 2002, as part of their gap-filling function, the FEC passed regulations defining "public communication" (as in, that which the FEC would regulate generally) as "a communication by means of any broadcast, cable or satellite communication, newspaper, magazine, outdoor advertising facility, mass mailing or telephone bank to the general public, or any other form of general public political advertising. The term public communication shall not include communications over the Internet."

  • Under that regulation, Internet communications, no matter how closely they would be coordinated with political parties or a candidate's campaign, could not be considered "coordinated" under the FEC's regulations.

  • Moreover, under the existing state of regulations, websites not owned by campaigns had no obligation to disclose when campaigns had paid for content.

  • Reps. Shays and Meehan believed that this absence of regulation undermined the intent of campaign finance reform, so they sued the FEC to overturn the regulation as violative of Congress' intent. Last fall, they won, as Judge Kollar-Kotelly held that exempting the internet from regulation would subvert the Act. She ordered the FEC to pass new regulations to cover it. [more]

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