[EL] Informational benefit outweighed by cost?

[Salvador Peralta]

I think the term "non-corrupting" speech needs closer examination.  When individual donors are spending more on "speech" than the candidates themselves in particular races, as apparently happened in Republican primary states such as South Carolina, there is every reason to believe that the potential for corruption exists. 

I see no good reason to pretend that a $2 million ad buy is not a $2 million ad buy regardless of whether it goes directly into a candidate's campaign coffers or whether it goes into the coffers of a pac that is controlled by subordinates or allies of the candidate.



________________________________
 From: Steve Hoersting <hoersting at gmail.com>
To: law-election at uci.edu 
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 11:45 AM
Subject: [EL] Informational benefit outweighed by cost?
 

Kim Strassel has another piece in today's WSJ intimating that the compelled disclosure of independent, non-corrupting speech poses too high a cost on speech rights for too little benefit in voter information -- especially absent a meaningful exemption available not just to Vandersloot, for whom it is too late, but to other would-be funders noticing this treatment, and eager to seek an exemption as John Doe or Jane Doe.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070304577396412560038208.html

-- 
Stephen M. Hoersting


_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20120511/307eee22/attachment.html>