FEC takes up thorny case of political blogs

By Steve McGookin

updated 4:02 p.m. ET May 16, 2005

Ordinarily, the U.S. Federal Elections Commission is preparing to hire some extra mailroom staff about now. But since the overwhelming majority of responses to the current invitation to public comment are likely to arrive electronically, there probably won't be many mail sacks to heave up to the boardroom.

At issue is the question of political blogs, or Web logs. Should they be regulated, and how? Above all, should they be subject to the spending caps inherent in campaign finance legislation?

In launching the consultative stage of what is set to be one of its most eagerly awaited and arguably important rulings, the FEC, at least partly, attempted to defuse the widespread criticism from an online political community agitated by what it sees as a distinct threat to its right to free speech.

When it was redrafting rules on campaign finance in 2002 following the adoption of McCain-Feingold, the FEC had opted not to regulate the use of the Internet for political activity.

Now, it is revisiting that approach — somewhat reluctantly — due to a federal court ruling last year, which said that leaving the medium out of the overall picture could undermine the whole purpose of the legislation.

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With the unprecedented influence of bloggers of both political hues during the 2004 electoral cycles — specifically their role in fundraising — the issue has assumed a high profile within political circles. But it was an old-fashioned hand-delivered letter at the Politics Online conference in Washington, D.C. in March that helped crystallize opposition — from both the left and right — to any hint of a get-tough policy singling out blogs.

Michael Bassik, of consultants Malchow Schlackman Hoppey and Cooper, which ran the online side of John Kerry's presidential campaign, handed the letter, urging the FEC to clearly include blogs in the so-called "media exemption" from regulation, to the Commission's chairman, Scott Thomas, sparking the bipartisan Online Coalition petition.

The media exemption simply means, for example, that mainstream media outlets and news organizations are allowed to endorse political candidates without such endorsements being considered "contributions."

By the time the process ends with a public hearing in June, ahead of the final rule-making in the summer, the Commission will doubtless have sifted through tens of thousands of e-mails in response to proposals that seek to address perceived "loopholes" in campaign finance reform. However, it will likely back away from any specific regulatory crackdown on blogging.

There are some interesting questions to be explored that will likely not be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

While a fundamental starting point, according to the FEC, is not to deter ordinary citizens from becoming involved in political activity, a big difficulty is placing any kind of accurate value on political activity conducted online. The Commission's responsibility is to regulate only monetary exchanges, as opposed to intellectual, as well as deciding whether or not such activity even rises to a level where the FEC would be concerned in any case.

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