At least, according to the North Carolina Legislature. Now I'm pretty sure there was a US Supreme Court decision that ruled that money DOES equal free speech, but I can't cite that one. I'll see if any of my lawyer readers know about that one.

In this case, the legislature has decided that in a judicial race, if any one candidate decides to take "public funding"* for their election, then all other candidates, EVEN ONES WHO DO NOT TAKE PUBLIC FUNDING, have to adhere to all the rules of the public funding candidate.

So when one judge decided to take public funding and agreed to all the rules of the public funding game, the other candidate, who did NOT take public funding and did NOT agree to said game rules, was no longer permitted to accept ANY donations to their election in the last 21 days of the election cycle.

That's wrong. The General Assembly passed the law, and they plan to defend it -- as a judge (who won the race, despite the horrible, unconstitutional rules) and a group that tried to donate funds are suing to change the rules. I truly hope they win and I am actually permitted to give money to any candidate I want.

* Public funding is crap. I should not have one single dollar of my forced collections of taxes used to promote the election of someone I disagree with. I don't care about the benefits of it, it's plain wrong to force me to support a candidate -- and public funding does just that.

Posted by: Ogre at 04:56 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 274 words, total size 2 kb.

1 I don't recall exactly, unless it is the Teamsters case that permitted union members to hold back that portion of their dues that was slated for the DNC.

Posted by: Oddybobo at August 12, 2005 08:53 AM (6Gm0j)

2 And you call yourself a supreme court nominee...

Posted by: Ogre at August 12, 2005 08:59 AM (/k+l4)

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