[EL] Candidate responsibility for others' actions

[Scarberry, Mark]

For some reason I'm blanking on an issue. Certainly there are general arguments that can be brought to bear on whether a person can be held liable for the actions of others whom they don't control, but I think there must be some specific election law authority on the following question:

May a candidate be fined or otherwise sanctioned for independent actions taken by the candidate's supporters, such as putting up signs in prohibited places or in prohibited ways? (For example, supporters may affix campaign stickers to traffic signs or post campaign signs on utility poles in violation of local ordinances.)

This must have come up in the context of political action committees that fail to register appropriately or that take contributions in excess of legal limits. I don't think a candidate can be held responsible for those actions. We also know that candidates are neither expected to limit nor required to try to limit non-coordinated independent expenditures.

But right now I'm particularly interested in local ordinances with respect to placement of signs.

Mark

Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law
Malibu, CA 90263
(310)506-4667

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20130917/821a4d0c/attachment.html>