From Kurt Eichenwald: Cash to Politicians is Free Speech. A Vote Isn't?

An opinion piece - so it is biased, but it raises an important question. If funding a campaign in order to influence people's votes is free speech, why isn't voting? Should those who promote voting frame it as a free speech issue? 

- Click here for the article.  

If I send an envelope stuffed with cash to support a politician, that’s free speech. If I send an envelope stuffed with my ballot to support a politician, it’s not. That is the twisted world created by our current Supreme Court

. . . In this topsy turvy world of conservative legal interpretation, giving $1 billion to an enterprise that claims to be a not-for-profit is allowed to hide its contributors because that is “central to the First Amendment’s meaning and purpose,” former Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the abomination decision in Citizens United v. FEC. And this is just one of a long string of rulings by conservative justices that flung open the door of democracy for manipulation by the very rich.

. . . The Founders did know of many types of political speech - with voting being the most obvious. But not to a court that believes money supporting a candidate is free speech, while supporting that candidate with a vote is not.

The entire approach is absurd. “It seems like an obvious proposition that a citizen registering to vote or casting a ballot is engaging in free speech,” Armand Derfner and J. Gerald Hebert, two experts on law and voting wrote in Yale Law and Policy Review. “This simple proposition is especially fitting in light of the broad First Amendment protection extended to the dollars spent in political campaigns to influence votes. But the current Supreme Court rarely scrutinizes voting regulations as it does other speech regulations.”

Besides, if the Supreme Court ever declared that casting a ballot is political speech, their endless effort to gut the Voting Rights Act in cases like Shelby v. Holder would end. That would mean that the electorate would be allowed to vote without improper interference by states desperately working to throw up barriers to the ballot box.

For more on the question of whether voting is speech - which would make great weekly written assignment - click on these: 

- Voting Is Speech.

- Protect Voting Like We Protect Free Speech.

- THE FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTS ACTIVITIES ADJACENT TO VOTING, BUT STOPS SHORT OF VOTING ITSELF.

- WHY DON'T WE DEFEND VOTING ON THE GROUNDS OF FREE SPEECH?

- Legislators’ votes are not protected speech, Supreme Court rules.

- - Nevada Commission on Ethics v. Carrigan.