Spotlight on the trolls
It’s a shame that it took a foreign invasion via internet, including a flood of Facebook ads from Russian meddlers, to get members of Congress taking seriously an unmet responsibility to the American people who elect them. But the Honest Ads Act deserves applause on its worthy-enough terms: Introduced by two Democratic Sens. Mark Warner (Va.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and backed by Arizona Republican John McCain, the bill would apply the same rules that already require “This ad paid for by. . .” statements on all election-season TV commercials naming candidates for Congress and President to ads bought on heavily trafficked web channels — including Facebook, Google and Twitter, which account for the bulk of such spots.
The Federal Election Commission explored doing exactly this more than a decade ago, only to be dissuaded by tech-industry lobbyists. There was no justification then for keeping political ad sponsors under wraps in one medium while exposing them on another, and there’s no excuse now.
But even in the unlikely event both Senate and House agree to expose some of the hands that feed them, they’ll leave the most vexing problems of political ads unaddressed. Namely, that — whether on TV or on the internet — even entities that name the groups behind a given commercial have no legal obligation to disclose who’s stacking up the cash behind the curtain.
Which is to say, telling viewers that Americans for America or People for Justice is responsible for a given ad educates them not one bit about who is really trying to elect or sink a given politician, and therefore what their motives might be.
That’s called dark money, and, when it floods into a campaign by the millions, it’s corrosive to the political process. The Supreme Court’s majority decision in Citizens United, the landmark 2010 case that widened the floodgates of money in politics, specifically urged Congress to demand such disclosure.
No, not all paid commercials can be so regulated. Issue ads fall in a different category; the First Amendment makes them a special case.
In a free country, political communication can’t be restrained or stopped, nor should it be. But when campaign money flows in specifically to elect a President or senator or congressman, the voting public at least has the right to know who’s behind it.