When Political Speech Comes under Fire

[Geee]

National Review:

This month an unnamed private family foundation, apparently concerned with the integrity of elections, paid for 145 billboards in Ohio and Wisconsin. The boards featured a picture of a judge’s gavel and a simple message: “Voter Fraud Is a Felony — up to 3½ years and a $10,000 fine.” That’s it.

But liberal activist groups went into frenzy mode, claiming the billboards were part of a voter-suppression scheme. Beginning this week, the billboards’ owner, Clear Channel, will start to remove the signs. For a few days, Clear Channel had withstood the pressure, claiming it didn’t have the right to censor political speech. Then it claimed it “made a mistake” by signing a written contract to rent the billboards without forcing the sponsor to identify itself. Then it knuckled under completely by saying it would insist the sponsor either reveal itself — thus shifting all the protests and intimidation toward the sponsor — or remove the billboards. The sponsor declined to become a piñata, so the message will disappear. As penance, Clear Channel will donate ten signs of its own in the Cleveland area that read “Voting Is a Right. Not a Crime!”

 

This country has a long tradition of free speech and anonymous political commentary, starting with the Federalist Papers. How have we reached a point where political speech can be so muzzled?

[Argyle58]

I am shocked that Clear Channel would cave so easily. One would think that they, of all the media conglomerates, would see this as a good test case for Ist Amendment rights, as those rights were intended by the Founders.

[Valin]

National Review:

Clear Channel is pulling down signs that say, “Voter fraud is a felony.”

John Fund

10/23/12

 

 

This month an unnamed private family foundation, apparently concerned with the integrity of elections, paid for 145 billboards in Ohio and Wisconsin. The boards featured a picture of a judge’s gavel and a simple message: “Voter Fraud Is a Felony — up to 3½ years and a $10,000 fine.” That’s it.

 

(Snip)

 

Color of Change, the group that in 2010 urged advertisers not to buy time on Glenn Beck’s Fox News show, began a petition campaign to pressure Clear Channel to halt what it called “one of the nastiest suppression schemes we’ve seen.” The bloody shirt of Bain Capital was even hoisted aloft by Ohio Democratic state senator Nina Turner, who pointed out that one of the owners of Clear Channel is the investment house that Mitt Romney helped found.

 

At the same time, none of the critics could claim that the billboard wasn’t factual. Voter fraud is a felony, and both Cleveland and Milwaukee, to name two cities, have seen their fair share in recent years. But Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change, claims, “You’re more likely to get hit by lightning than to have in-person voter fraud.” Eric Marshall of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights warns that the billboards “attach an implicit threat of criminal prosecution to the civic act of voting.”

 

 

(Snip)

 

 

It makes me wonder why the left is so afraid of voter ID laws, and ensuring that elections a truly fair, and the likelihood of fraud being committed is lessen?

[Geee]

When Political Speech Comes under Fire - The Right Reasons

[Valin]

@Geee

 

I was going to delete mine, but this works too.