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 Technology News | March 2005 
Blogger Alert: US Election Regulators Are Watching
 Anne E. Kornblut - The International Herald Tribune
| Politics on the internet is being reviewed, but it is unclear how much appetite the FEC has for trying to govern internet activity.
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Washington - Federal election commissioners in the United States are preparing to consider how revamped campaign finance laws apply to political activity on the Internet, including online advertising, fund-raising e-mail messages and Web blogs.
Anyone who decides to "set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet" could be subject to Federal Election Commission regulation, Bradley Smith, a Republican commissioner, said in an interview posted last week on the technology news site Cnet.com.
"It becomes a really complex issue that would strike deep into the heart of the Internet and the bloggers who are writing out there today," said Smith, who opposed regulating Internet activity when the commission originally addressed it in 2002.
But it is unclear how much appetite the FEC, criticized in the past by advocates for election reform as being dysfunctional and ineffective, really has for trying to govern Internet activity. In interviews last week, several commissioners warned about the complexities of trying to assign a dollar value to online campaign activity and said they hoped any new regulations would not stifle personal political involvement.
"People should not be alarmed," said Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic commissioner.
"Given the impact of the Internet," Weintraub said, "I think we have to take a look at whether there are aspects of that that ought to be subject to the regulations. But again, I don't want this issue to get overblown. Because I really don't think, at the end of the day, this commission is going to do anything that affects what somebody sitting at home, on their home computer, does."
After the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law was passed in March 2002, the commission, which is in charge of its enforcement, issued extensive rules to accommodate the law's provisions, including a blanket exemption for all Internet activity. But a federal judge ruled last year that many of the rules were too lax and specifically asked it to address the question of Internet activity.
Although the commission appealed several elements of the judge's ruling, the Internet provision was not included, which means it must now address it.
"I don't know how we get out of it at this point," said David Mason, a Republican commissioner. "We have a ruling ordering us to go back and define a rule."
The six-member commission is divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans; their vote not to appeal the part of the judge's ruling dealing with Internet activity broke along party lines, with Democrats voting not to appeal.
Commissioners said they could consider several questions, including whether political Web sites were technically coordinating with official campaigns by posting links to a candidate's Web site, and whether partisan bloggers were making in-kind contributions by donating their expertise and computer equipment to a campaign.
By law, contributions of more than $1,000 or services of an equivalent value must be made public. Individuals are permitted to volunteer their time, and there is an exemption for newspapers, broadcast networks, magazines and other periodicals. It is unclear whether political news sites would meet the exemption test, or whether the commission would go beyond regulating Internet advertisements bought by the campaigns.
In an interview, Smith said he did not believe that the judge's ruling limited the panel to regulating only paid advertising on the Internet.
"In theory, there's no reason why everything that goes on a blog advocating a candidate wouldn't be an independent expenditure and subject to regulation," Smith said.
But Weintraub cautioned against jumping to conclusions, saying the goal was simply to address the Internet in some way.
"We are looking at whether there is something short of a complete exemption for Internet activity," she said.
"One really good question that needs to be asked is, 'How do you value this stuff?' " she said. "Because we only track money - campaign money that people spend on campaigns - not their thoughts or their beliefs or their statements. Just when they spend money. So if something is done really cheaply, it's not going to rise to the level where it will meet our regulations anyway."
The Republican commissioners interviewed agreed that it would be difficult to place a value on most political activity conducted online, and thus to determine whether it fell under the campaign contribution limits. "If you have a very successful blogger who attracts a lot of attention based on the commentary he or she is undertaking, and maybe that activity is coordinated with a candidate, what is the value of that?" said Michael E. Toner, the third Republican member of the commission. |
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