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Urge Congress to Protect Individual Political Advocacy on the Internet

Demand a Moratorium on Internet Speech Rulemaking

The Federal Election Commission ("FEC") is currently considering new rules that would apply federal campaign finance law to Internet political advocacy. There is a growing concern in Congress about the possible impact of those rules on independent political speech by small and individual speakers. Several bills have been introduced in Congress that would have the effect of stopping the FEC's rulemaking. Please ask your Senators and Representatives to protect the online political activities of individuals from regulation and to demand that Congress pass an immediate moratorium on the FEC rulemaking.

As the last election showed, the Internet is a powerful forum for democratic discourse. The Internet has made it possible for millions of ordinary Americans to have a real voice in electoral politics and to have access to an extraordinary array of news and opinion, delivered by bloggers and alternative media sources. The Internet helped produce a more informed and engaged electorate and furthered the prime goal of the campaign finance laws, which is to reduce the corrupting influence of big money on the election process. It is critical that Congress ensure that this important First Amendment forum remains free from burdensome regulation.

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Background: Federal Campaign Finance Law and the Internet

Since the 1970s, the Federal Campaign Finance Act has regulated expenditures and contributions in elections to ensure that elections are fair and open and free from the corrupting influences of big money. Under the law, people who spend money to engage in election related speech that specifically endorses or opposes a federal candidate are subject to various disclosure and reporting requirements. People who join together and spend money to engage in broader election-related political advocacy or raise money for candidates may also have reporting and disclosure obligations. And people who spend money and coordinate their political activity with a candidate may have to treat their expenditures as a campaign contribution. In 2002, Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act ("BCRA") to strengthen these laws.

Before the Internet, these rules had little or no impact on small independent speakers who rarely engaged in regulated activities such as purchasing television advertising. But on the Internet, these laws threaten to reach millions of independent political speakers who are blogging, launching websites or using email and other technologies to discuss political issues, raise money for candidates, or advocate for the election or defeat of a particular candidate. The FEC recently began a proceeding to write rules for online political speech. While the FEC proposal is intended to be limited, it will have a harmful impact on the Internet political speech of ordinary people. And it will leave the door open for additional regulation later on.

Congress needs to act immediately to protect online political speech by enacting a moratorium on the rulemaking while Congress takes a second look at the law's impact on independent political speech online.

CDT believes that individuals' political speech on the Internet is a powerful engine for democratic discourse and an antidote to the domination of big money in politics.

• Internet's user driven control and decentralized architecture constrains the ability of wealth to monopolize attention or drown out other voices;
• As the last election showed, the Internet's low barriers to entry dramatically increased the number of people engaged in election related speech in the last election and contributed to a five fold increase in small contributions;
• The emergence of bloggers and other alternative forms of media on the Internet strengthened democratic debate and helped produce a more informed and engaged electorate;
• Robust political activity by ordinary people strengthens and supports the central purpose of campaign finance laws by diluting the strength and power of big money voices;
• There is little or no evidence that the Internet is in danger of becoming a toll for wealthy interests to exert disproportionate influence over the political process.

For these reasons we, believe that Congress should not include the Internet in broad prophylactic campaign finance rules. We are not saying that campaign finance rules can never apply to the Internet, but because the Internet is an important First Amendment forum -- the Twenty First Century's public square -- there should be regulation only if there is a compelling record of abuses. Even then, rules should only apply to the big money interests that the law was intended to reach. Ordinary speakers should not have to hire a lawyer to navigate campaign finance laws on the Internet and should not be chilled from speaking because of burdensome and complex regulations. That is why it is important for Congress to take action to stop the rulemaking while it takes a fresh look at this issue.

More Information

For more background, see http://www.cdt.org/speech/political/.

CDT is urging bloggers and other Internet users to sign a set of principles calling on Congress and the Federal Elections Commission to keep burdensome federal campaign finance laws from hindering the online political speech of individuals. The principles, developed in collaboration with the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (IPDI) of George Washington University, respond to a recent proposal by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that considers extension of burdensome campaign finance laws to the Internet. CDT and IPDI have launched a web site to promote the principles and to allow bloggers and other users to educate the FEC on the diversity of independent political commentary online.

Protect Online Political Speech web site http://fec.cdt.org

The Internet has greatly expanded the participation of ordinary citizens in the political process, and has opened up a huge diversity of alternative sources for political news and opinion. Application of the complex campaign finance laws to individual speech online would chill this robust expression, thereby defeating the very purpose of the campaign finance laws, which is to counteract the role of big money in politics.

The CDT campaign to protect online political speech has three goals:

1. To gain widespread individual and organizational support for the free speech online principles. CDT believes that both supporters and opponents of campaign finance law can support the principles because they focus solely on individual speech and do not seek exemption for state political parties, organizations or corporations.
2. To make it easy for bloggers and other Internet users to provide the FEC with detailed examples of how political speech is done on the Internet, how little it costs, and how it expands the number of voices.
3. To provide background information about the issues, including an overview of the FEC's "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking," a discussion of the problems for individual speech raised by the campaign finance laws, and a discussion of what is at stake in the current debate.