[EL] Inslee bill to make lying punishable

[Smith, Bradley]

If a state certified Candidate A the winner, but the prosecutor was really, really sure that it sure that that result was fraudulent, could he prosecute the state officials doing the certification?

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> On Behalf Of Stephanie F Singer
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2022 5:54 PM
To: John Tanner <john.k.tanner at gmail.com>
Cc: Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] Inslee bill to make lying punishable


** [ This email originated outside of Capital University ] **


Doesn’t that brief address a much larger category of speech? The starting question for the brief is “Can a state government criminalize political statements that are less than 100% truthful?” whereas the Inslee proposal seems to be limited to statements about election results. In any world where the category “political statements” does not include all statements, some statements have to be outside the category.  If the set of “non-political statements” contains anything at all, surely it should contain a simple statement of a fact (e.g., "Candidate X got more votes than Candidate Y") sourced from a designated authority (a Board of Elections).

Are there any legal restrictions in any states for statements like “Democrats vote on Tuesday; Republicans vote on Wednesday?” Have there been? What’s the legal history of attempts to ban such speech?


On Jan 8, 2022, at 5:52 PM, John Tanner <john.k.tanner at gmail.com<mailto:john.k.tanner at gmail.com>> wrote:


 This reminds me of my favorite legal brief of all time.  https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/sba-list-merits-filed-brief.pdf<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.cato.org%2fsites%2fcato.org%2ffiles%2fpubs%2fpdf%2fsba-list-merits-filed-brief.pdf&c=E,1,yzOLvPB8s2vhECOcROgLbBrQKpYUkAwGjYTzQp138OfodTI70sZ0ZKrY0Eyf1tHsC99wqBKkgzxjVQeyEpu7c6VGvIaEtqkwhNDvZ6e9v86fdhAsw4LgcQ,,&typo=1>

Sent from my iPhone


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