January 25, 2010

Political speech just too much trouble nowadays

As additional rules are created for regulating political speech, any speech arguably within their reach is chilled. Campaign finance regulations now impose unique and complex rules on 71 distinct entities. These entities are subject to separate rules for 33 different types of political speech. The FEC has adopted 568 pages of regulations, 1,278 pages of explanations and justifications for those regulations, and 1,771 advisory opinions since 1975. In fact, after this Court in WRTL adopted an objective "appeal to vote" test for determining whether a communication was the functional equivalent of express advocacy, the FEC adopted a two-part, 11-factor balancing test to implement WRTL's ruling.
That's nuts. I need a calculator just to multiply 71 times 33.

1 comment:

Grant said...

Hmmm. I detect a bit of the old Dark Shadows gambit at play.