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You seem to think we're trying to stop people from anonymously posting their opinions. We are not.

We are trying to stop people from spending millions of dollars on paid ads advocating the defeat of a candidate they don't like (over 90% of independent expenditures go to negative ads).

That's a little different than the federalist papers, I think.

If someone has a powerful message, they can make a YouTube video and it will spread. If someone has a message that requires millions of dollars to be powerful, then it's not unreasonable to know who is spending those millions.

> it is very easy to cut down an upstart candidate by an entrenched incumbent by just attacking their supporters and intimidating them before the challenger even becomes a threat

Can you cite any examples of this happening? Typically the attack is on the upstart candidate, not their supporters.

Someone's anonymous speech is being unmasked. I agree with the OP. Being rich doesn't exclude them from the freedom to speak without fear. An advertisement is part of that speech IMHO.

>>> You seem to think we're trying to stop people from anonymously posting their opinions. We are not.

Of course not. You're trying to stop people from anonymously supporting people that publicly post their opinion. That's not much better, in my eye, since in our day and age, you can not effect change alone.

>>> We are trying to stop people from spending millions of dollars on paid ads advocating the defeat of a candidate they don't like

This is an essence of politics - convincing people to adopt your point of view by explaining it to them. Including when your point of view is the candidate is bad. Imagine the worst guy you can think of - truly Hitler incarnate - is running for your city council. Would you want to be able to donate to his opponent's campaign? What if this bad guy is truly vindictive and sworn than anybody who donates to his opponent would regret that very soon? Would you want to be able to do it anonymously?

>>> Can you cite any examples of this happening?

I can cite a lot of instances where people were attacked and suffered for their speech expressed in donations, Brandon Eich being easily the most recent and prominent. However I'm pretty sure once privacy is gone, attacking the supporters would be as prominent, simply because it would be an effective tactics and there's absolutely nothing preventing its use.

> However I'm pretty sure once privacy is gone, attacking the supporters would be as prominent

Our country doesn't have a tradition of unlimited anonymous election spending. That only started happening with Citizens United in 2010. So we're not about to unleash some new torrent of attacks on previously anonymous donors.

You value privacy over transparency. I do in some areas, but not in political spending. Seems like we'll have to agree to disagree.

>"Our country doesn't have a tradition of unlimited anonymous election spending. That only started happening with Citizens United in 2010. So we're not about to unleash some new torrent of attacks on previously anonymous donors."

To be clear, Citizens United was engaged in either campaign spending, candidate advocacy, or issue advocacy, depending on how you look at their actions; it is difficult to describe what they did as 'election spending' because the money was not going towards an election. This is a meaningful distinction, and not merely semantic for a number of reasons, of which I am sure we are all aware.

There is a history of anonymous political speech in the USA, beginning with the federalist and anti-federalist papers. If one agrees that media corporations should be allowed to spend on anonymous campaign speech, then it follows that everyone else should have the same right. It is illogical to limit anonymous speech to broadcasters, publishers, as well as their friends and allies.

>>> Our country doesn't have a tradition of unlimited anonymous election spending.

I'm pretty sure it does - people always donated to causes, and before the current "money in politics" panic campaign, they were anonymous for the most part. All the statutes requiring donor disclosure that I could find were pretty new. Could you bring an example of donor disclosure requirements that would qualify as "tradition"?

>>> That only started happening with Citizens United in 2010

Citizens United decision changed very little on establishing privacy or disclosure. The decision was that the government can not ban a group of people, organized as a company, labor union or any other association. It actually upheld the disclosure requirements of BRCA. Of course, since the group has no obligation to disclose its membership or revenue sources, it can be used as a vehicle for anonymous speech. But that venue always existed, it was just that BRCA unconstitutionally banned companies from political speech.

<i>You value privacy over transparency. I do in some areas, but not in political spending.</i>

It's not the question of my values. I won't be the one who would abuse disclosure requirements. It's not the question of my preferences, it's a question of consequences which would happen regardless of what you and I prefer. Ignoring this consequences because they don't align with your values won't make them go away, they still will happen. Powerful people would still abuse disclosure requirements to suppress their opponents and ruin their supporter base, regardless of what you think about it.

It's like Myspace saying "we value user experience, so we won't implement restrictive XSS filters". Then a guy named Samy comes and writes some JS code and pretty soon he owns their user experience lock, stock and barrel. Did their values help them prevent it? Not really. Now, in this case the effect is a bunch of wrong bits on the internet and a couple of mildly bruised egos. But with political campaign abuse the result would be bad laws passed, bad people elected and lives of people ruined when they opposed some bad candidate.

> All the statutes requiring donor disclosure that I could find were pretty new

They date back to Watergate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_...

Since then, monied interests have found various ways around them, like soft money (fixed by McCain-Feingold), and now 501c4s.

The SCOTUS majority in Citizens United actually assumed that there would be full disclosure of the outside spending, since super PACs have to file with the FEC. That's been evaded by having 501c4s and other anonymous organizations listed as the donor.

1970s is not exactly a "tradition". And there were only disclosure requirements for committees, not for every organization that is engaged in speech. And, of course, as you can see for yourself, it did not work - with all regulation being continuously passed for 40 years, there's more and more money in politics. But I'm sure this time it would be different.

As long as you keep pretending that "money is not speech" you would get surprised when people who want to speak politically would do so despite a myriad of regulations. The only way to prevent it is to restrict political speech. So far SCOTUS has been very skeptical towards such efforts, but this may be not forever, and one day First Amendment may fall. It would be a very sad day for America.

This thread has gone on for a while I'm not going to keep arguing point by point, but you misunderstand election law. Between Watergate and 2010 it was hard to do anonymous electioneering, for any person or organization.

I think unlimited anonymous election spending is more of a problem than the possibility that a big donor might get bad press or be shunned by potential employers. You disagree. That's fine, let's get on with our lives and stop trying to convince each other, which obviously isn't going to happen.

Just a question, prior to Watergate, would it have been possible for someone to buy up hours of TV ads nationwide attacking the opponent of the person they want to win? I don't know anything about election law, so I'm wondering if something changed or if attack ads and massive spending just became more accepted.

I'm not sure about TV ads specifically (TV ads probably were much less important in the 60s than now) but there's absolutely no reason to prevent somebody from speaking against any political candidate. If the First Amendment protects anything, it would definitely protect that.

Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine

>> it is very easy to cut down an upstart candidate by an entrenched incumbent by just attacking their supporters and intimidating them before the challenger even becomes a threat

> Can you cite any examples of this happening? Typically the attack is on the upstart candidate, not their supporters.

Brendan Eich. He supported an unpopular opinion at the ballot box and lost his job for it. We can debate whether it was because he _is_ a bigot or not, but there is a direct causal link between his paid support for a cause and his lost job.

Typically the attack is on the upstart candidate, not their supporters.

This is silly at best and naive most likely. The NY Times goes after "supporters" all the time, of views they don't agree with.

The examples are too obvious to cite.

There's also friendly fire.

"Dark money" (using your term) isn't allowed to coordinate with the candidate's campaign. But voters don't make the distinction between candidates and their supporters.

I've spoken with campaigns who were hurt by independent expenditures by their own supporters, with messaging that reflected poorly on the candidate.

The lack of accountability creates the opportunity to sabotage a campaign. If we can imagine it, I'm sure it's been done.

This is not connected with disclosure - you can always have somebody pretend to support you but speak in a way that actually harms you. It's one of the oldest tricks in a political book to have some despised group to publicly support your opponent and thus harm him. Lack of privacy would not help with this - you can always find a frontman or a barter scheme or a PR agency that would agree to channel the money, unless you get rid of the privacy completely, so that no private transactions at all are possible.

You defend legalized bribery under the guise of free speech and privacy. Nice.

This is governance, not commerce. Big difference.

You realize the elected persons are representatives? Of the people? Right? Democracy is impractical without accountability and transparency.

So might makes right?

In my dictionary, bribery is:

The offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of something of value for the purpose of influencing the action of an official in the discharge of his or her public or legal duties.

How somebody using his own money to speak in support or opposition of a political candidate is "bribery" is a mystery to me. Do you have some other definition of bribery?

>>> You realize the elected persons are representatives? Of the people? Right? Democracy is impractical without accountability and transparency.

That's correct, but we're not talking about spending public money, in which spending accountability and transparency is crucial. We're talking about spending private money - in which case the accountability should be only to the people who own the money. You do not owe me any account of how you spend your own money, and I do not owe any to you.

>>> So might makes right?

Without privacy, yes, that would be the case - whoever possesses control of the government enforcement machine, would be able to suppress and intimidate anybody who dares to support their opponents.

Money can be used to drown out competing messages. This can take many forms, such as overwhelming media appearance in political campaigns/attack ads, large companies using litigation against smaller entities that can't afford to fight regardless of their message, to "laundering" money through super PACs or funding think tanks and research groups whose sole purpose is to publish findings to the funding entities' benefit. I also think it's hazardous to assume valid messages would always have competative supporting dollar figures. What people want and what businesses want are often very different things, and from a wealth standpoint you need many times more people in a lower income bracket to equal the "message" of a 1%er.

It can be difficult if not impossible to figure out the sources of funding in a lot of these cases. Particularly in elections, that run on money, and presumably whose candidates are paying a lot of attention to the needs of their doners (perhaps more then their voters), the source of this money matters. I think this is a great idea aimed at increasing the transparancy in the shady world of campaigning.

>>> Money can be used to drown out competing messages

"Drown out" is just another way of saying "speech". Unless drowning down is done by non-speech ways - like getting the speaker beaten up or jailed or sued into bankruptcy.

>>> large companies using litigation against smaller entities that can't afford to fight regardless of their message

And removal of privacy would fix that how exactly?

>>> groups whose sole purpose is to publish findings to the funding entities' benefit.

If those entities do that, they are PR companies. It is a completely legal business, nothing wrong with that.

>>> It can be difficult if not impossible to figure out the sources of funding in a lot of these cases.

Which would lead to more and more restrictive policies, and more and more instances of abuse, where incumbents, unable to compete on message, would instigate "campaign finance" investigation against challengers and destroy their campaign, only for the investigation to peter out immediately after electoral threat is gone. More power you put into this system, the more abuse it would generate.

>>> increasing the transparancy in the shady world of campaigning.

There's nothing shady in anonymous speech. You do not have the right to violate other's privacy, and somebody's refusal to disclose their private matters does not make them "shady". "Honest man has nothing to hide" is a lie.

Anonymous funding isn't the same as anonymous speech (although SCOTUS disagrees with me.) Everyone has the same number of voices, but a vastly different number of dollars.

If one party spends $100M on their message, and the other just says it loudly at city council meetings, to his/her friends, passes out $100 worth of fliers, writes letters to the editors of every major newspaper, and puts up a webpage they designed themselves - there's no competition on message here. It's a slaughter on resources.

>Banning anonymous speech means if you lose on message, and you have power, you can attack your opponent on other aspects

Money is far more akin to power than speech. Money is generally a proxy for power.

It is essentially the same. Money is needed to effect the speech, especially in the era of professional marketing and electronic media. Of course, you can just stand on top of a soapbox and shout, but how effective would that be? To deliver your speech to the masses, you need money and usually a professional help. I bet the guy jumping from the plane and filming it wasn't working for free in that ad, right? And the plane didn't fly without fuel and pilot, which needed to be paid for, too? This is all necessary components of effective political speech, and by restricting it, you are restricting speech and reducing it to a whisper to be heard only by ones in your immediate vicinity.

>>> If one party spends $100M on their message, and the other just says it loudly at city council meetings

In fact, nothing like this happens. Usually, for any idea worth talking about, there is a lot of money on both sides, because a lot of people in the US have money and would gladly spend it to support the cause they consider right. Much less would be willing to do so if they would face harassment, retaliation and possibly ruin of their life's work for it. I do not think this should be a consequence of you supporting your favorite cause. Do you? If your worst and most corrupt opponents would control the state enforcement machine, would you prefer to be able to work anonymously to dislodge them or not be able to do this without risking your whole life be ruined immediately?

>>> Money is generally a proxy for power.

This is true. But you can not (usually) exercise the power directly against the message - the First Amendment guards against that quite successfully. With privacy destroyed, you can, however, successfully use the power against the messenger or people that allow them to deliver this message - thus effectively killing the message without running afoul of the letter of the First Amendment, but entirely destroying its purpose.

>It is essentially the same.

To say the least, this is disputed by intelligent and well-respected people on both sides, and neither sides' arguments can be dismissed with a wave.

>Usually, for any idea worth talking about, there is a lot of money on both side

This is the law of averages, and is not a law. If your philosophy depends on it being true, then it will fail.

I'm not dismissing it, I'm explaining, quite verbosely, why it is wrong.

>>> This is the law of averages, and is not a law.

Look at the data for any hot issue, from presidential election to gay marriage to gun control.

>>> If your philosophy depends on it being true, then it will fail.

It's not philosophy, it's what actually happens. If the reverse would happen, we would have to consider why there's no people having money that support certain point, and if this is a problem. But for any real point under discussion right now, it is not the case, so if you want to say it would be the case, you need to account for the fact it didn't happen and explain why it would be different in your case.

> I'm not dismissing it, I'm explaining, quite verbosely, why it is wrong.

Not clearly enough for me to understand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_averages

I'm not sure how law of averages fits here. I'm not saying donations will even out because it is random event that must regress to its mean within a short time. I'm saying donations already are pretty even for most hot topics, and that's not because of some probabilistic law, but because hot issues are hot because there are a lot of people interested in them, and a lot of them disagree (if they didn't, it would simply be a matter of consensus and there would be no need to spend money on convincing people). It has nothing to do with probability and everything to do with human behavior.

I definitely do not have as much of a voice as, say, Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times. And I never will.

My most realistic option for making my voice heard would be to contribute money to a person, campaign, corporation, whatever, that accepts money from other like-minded people and uses that money to advance our shared position.

However, I would be quite hesitant to do that if I couldn't do it anonymously. Aside from the chilling effects of the Brandon Eich debacle, there is also the practical consideration that volunteering contact information in this day and age is an invitation to incessant harassment from entities that operate under loopholes in do-no-call legislation.

I believe my voice is diminished by any political funding legislation that disallows anonymous donation.

You equate free speech with "fair". If I have a bullhorn and you don't, does that make my speech any less protected than yours, simply because you don't have a bullhorn?

I think there are good reasons against protection of bullhorns.

As a side note, this is why we have bad security. Most software developers and entrepreneurs always think of the best case scenario - how good could it be if it all works out. Rarely people think about what happens if it all works out, gets huge and then people with huge motivation, lots of money and no scruples whatsoever come and try to exploit your idea for their own benefit. If you don't consider the worst case, you don't understand the real consequences of your proposal. And then we have something like email that is abused by spammers, or XSS problems because we did not design a way to separate code from data, and we have to backpatch it and invent ways to fix the breakage because nobody considered the worst case when designing it in the first place.

Money is not free speech, regardless of what the Supreme Court says.

Yes, it is. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8213792

Self cite. Nice. Very authoritative.

  >> If one party spends $100M on their message, and the
  >> other just says it loudly at city council meetings
  >
  > In fact, nothing like this happens.

That is precisely what happens.

You should lobby. Or at least watch your local equivalent to C-SPAN. See how the game is played before you comment.

It was not supposed to make it "authoritative". It was supposed to keep the discussion in one branch. Of course, it failed, because following links is too hard.

>>> That is precisely what happens.

Supported by what data? Here's mine: http://www.cnbc.com/id/49550998/ Care to show yours?

>>> You should lobby

No thanks, I prefer to make my living in different ways.

>>> Or at least watch your local equivalent to C-SPAN

Which would show me the financial patterns how exactly?

>>> See how the game is played before you comment

Thank you for your concern about my education, however offbase it is. I am well aware how the game is played. That's exactly why I see the variety of vulnerabilities ripe for exploitation and dangers that destroying privacy in political speech would produce.

Data? Non-sequiturs are not data.

Sorry, but I can't even figure out what point you're arguing.

Have a nice day.

Usually when people say "this is precisely what happens", they have an idea what they say "precisely happens". I outlined my point right there on the link, about the balance on the money investment on opposing sides, and brought the data (if it's not enough, I can bring more, the data is readily available on most campaigns). You claimed something happens but were unable to support it with any numbers. Maybe it's connected to your inability to understand my point. Anyway, nice day to you too, sir.

Money is not speech. But spending money is part of the process of speaking. If it is legal to anonymously distribute a pamphlet then it must be legal to anonymously pay to have that pamphlet printed. Otherwise Congress need not ban books, but simply ban publishers.