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Free speech pretty much means you can't stop someone from advertising for themselves or a cause just because it isn't close to election season. I don't disagree with you at all, but this is going to be a constitutional no go, I think.
Free speech can be limited if you have a good reason. For example, if you don't want people to see how their food is raised, you can just ignore key constitutional freedoms..
Yup. The ag-gag laws seem to be a huge carve-out - if that can be managed, I don't see why we don't start limiting the election cycle, too.
Totally.
We have freedom here, and yet our elections are like 2 months long, start to finish (including hand-counting ballots from that one day of voting). My polling place is a mason's hall about a block away that they convert to a polling station with some cardboard boxes and folding tables.
What are you referencing?
Feels like you could go after it from a campaign finance angle, not that those laws are particularly restrictive as it stands.
Agreed. What about an inflation adjusted campaign budget for each elected position? I believe this system is already used in some countries.
I feel like this would promote a focus on policies/platforms and encourage good faith campaigning.
Citizens United determined that money is speech though.
I think most people agree that was a harmful decision though.
Absolutely. But you can't un-ting that bell, not without a constitutional amendment.
I really don't know. We'd have to pass it as a law and then see if it survives challenges. Better question is does either party have the political will to make it happen?
Campaigning is not a right. Postal employees can't run for office, for example.
I'm really not invested enough to disagree, here. If someone can make it happen, great. I think it might not pass constitutional muster but I'm not on the Supreme Court so what I think doesn't matter.
You could be right, who knows. But that would basically invalidate the entire Hatch Act, which would be wild. But Hatch is too restrictive in my opinion anyway.
They could regulate campaign donations, like when they are allowed to be made. Or maybe when those funds are allowed to be accessed. Maybe that would help.
Maybe the access. I don't know about the donations, though. It's already been ruled that donations are speech.
I'm not against the idea if someone can make it happen.
I guess this just reinforces the problem with Citizens United. All that free speech is infringing on everyone's free speech.
You aren't wrong.
It's sorta like how "Christmas season" feels earlier and earlier every year... I'm a Grinch until Thanksgiving, and a patriotic non-partisan until Independence Day, thank you very much.