Super PACs and Anonymous Speech

This election season has produced an amazing number of expensive mailers and other campaign activity from organizations trying to influence elections. In many cases it's not clear who is funding these organizations. There has also been a great deal of criticism regarding this activity. I'd like to explore this issue a bit.

What is Speech

Freedom of speech is generally considered to be synonymous with freedom of expression, regardless of the medium. For example it includes the freedom to express anything through written and spoken language, in addition to art.

Wealthy Speech

Some believe we should limit the speech of the wealthy because it may drown out the speech of the poor. In other words, we must limit speech of the wealthy because by allowing it we prevent the poor from having free speech. I'm not convinced that freedom of speech can or should guarantee that anyone will hear you. In addition if someone decides to spend more of their income on speech than someone else, they should be able to do so.

Pooling Speech

Another area being debated is whether individuals should be able to pool their money to make their speech more effective. The only argument I can think of for limiting this is that it may drown out the speech of the poor. This reason is insufficient to justify the harm it causes.

In politics there's an even more important reason to allow this. There's a good deal of evidence that politicians trade political favors such as favorable regulation to those who help them get elected. This makes it very difficult to vote an established politician out of office. Being able to pool money helps even up the odds, particularly for the poor.

Anonymous Speech

Another issue is whether people can speak anonymously. There are several possible reasons to limit anonymous speech:

• There's nobody to hold accountable if the speech causes someone harm.
• If the speech is anonymous, there may be large amounts, drowning out the speech of the poor.

There are also good reasons to not limit anonymous speech:

• People may be concerned that others may choose to harm them
  • speaking against someone with the power to put you in jail such as police
• People may be concerned that others may withhold a benefit from them
  • speaking against a government system that controls licensing, hands out business incentives, or provides services such as fire fighting

Foreign Speech

Some believe we should limit foreign speech in some way. By foreign speech I refer to speech intended to influence someone in another region. Some examples are:

• Someone from the state of Texas trying to influence an election in Utah
• Someone from China trying to influence an election in the United States

I don't think there's any compelling reason to limit foreign speech. The benefits are that it may teach us something. The harm is that it may drown out local speech.

False Speech

There have been many complaints about false or misleading information being published against a candidate. This is wrong, but what should we do about it. It's important for individuals to seek the truth and to not assume something is true simply because it came in the mail and looks professionally made. While it's true that distributing false information about an opponent can win an election, the truth can come out if we have freedom of speech. People will become more careful with what they believe. If the government gives the impression it can protect us from such mistakes, people will never learn. I'm not sure there's any government regulation that can protect us from lies.

Under what circumstances should government limit speech

Freedom of speech is so important that we shouldn't limit it without a very compelling justification. It makes sense that the freedom of speech is not absolute. Here are some reasonable limitations:

• People should be held accountable for their speech that causes harm. They can still express themselves, but must be willing to bare responsibility for their actions. Here are some examples:
  • Inciting a riot
  • Yelling fire in a crowded room
• Obscenity laws are tricky, but it seems reasonable that a community has a right to set standards.
• Speech that is false and misleading.

Conclusion

Freedom of speech is a foundational principle to protect. If we must limit it, there must be a very compelling reason.