Florida election law defies the First Amendment
We read:
"In 2006, Doug Guetzloe distributed a flyer about mayoral candidate David Strong to Winter Park, Florida, residents. It pertained to an embarrassing dustup Strong had with a neighbor. The police report Guetzloe quoted is publicly available. The alleged crime is not libel.
Lamar charged Guetzloe with violating Florida's election laws. One is supposed to include a disclaimer with any paid electioneering communication saying it's an electioneering communication. The flyer did not advocate voting for or against any candidate. Not that doing so should jeopardize anyone's liberty either.
Guetzloe pled no contest, thinking any penalty would be trivial. But he was sentenced to 60 days in jail and $8500 in fines. The easiest path might still have been to just do the time and pay the fine. But Guetzloe has been fighting back, spending a small fortune on legal fees.
Late in 2008, his attorneys filed a motion with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to declare Florida's Electioneering Communications law to be unconstitutional. A little earlier, a federal judge had restrained the State of Florida from enforcing that law.
Source
6 comments:
The mayor must be a Democrat.
hugo chavez would be proud!
People like this are our true heros not someone that plays sports or pretends to be someone else
We have sports heros? I thought they were pretty much all just a bunch of self-centered druggies now.
If upheld, it sounds as if this law could also make it illegal to even report on a candidate, which might actually be a dream come true for many pols.
But what if, instead of distributing a flyer, Mr. Guetzloe had reported the same facts on his blog, or in a letter to the editor of his local paper, or in an article in his local paper?
There appears to be no end to this slippery slope other than total silence (unless the silence itself is then interpreted as a statement, sigh).
The key here is "paid for by", which is the usual disclaimer on campaign literature. In NJ, any private citizen can put out a political flyer without any kind of disclaimer. When the publisher of said flyer is a political organization, however, it is required to identify the organization responsible for the flyer. This is required to track the flow of money from donors to recipients. When a private citizen is paying for and distributing a flyer, there is no flow of money to monitor, it is a personal political opinion, paid for by the individual expressing the opinion. This is pure free speech. Not sure about Florida's election laws, but this sounds like either a misuse of those laws or something unconstitutional.
Political speech is always covered by the First Amendment, even in FloriDUH.
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