In an op-ed titled “Political ads shouldn’t be faceless on Facebook”, published today in the Charlotte Observer, Melissa Kromm, Executive Director of North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections, makes the case for the urgent need for transparency law to catch up with changing campaign practices, which increasingly rely on online and social media advertising. As a key component of Kromm’s argument, she cites VRTK’s research demonstrated broad public support for a “right to know.”
Little information is provided to the public about these digital ads. One can track and see a print ad by, for example, purchasing a newspaper. Anyone with a TV or radio can see or hear a television or radio ad. However, the nature of campaign digital ads means you have to be targeted to see the ad.
According to polling by Voters’ Right to Know, 81% of American voters believe they should have the right to know the money behind elections — an almost unheard-of amount of agreement in these politically divisive times.
The good news is that a bipartisan group of North Carolina legislators is seeking to bring our election laws into the 21st century with the common-sense disclosure of digital ads. House Bill 700 requires disclaimers and disclosure closing this loophole, ensuring disclosure for all paid for digital campaign ads.
Currently, there are loopholes that allow certain entities to place digital campaign ads without a “Paid for by” line and that allow certain entities to hide the money behind the digital ads. This is mainly because our campaign finance laws have not kept up with changing technology.
House Bill 700 narrowly defined qualified digital ads as those placed with a fee and would require most campaign entities, supporting or opposing candidates or those mentioning a candidate 30 days prior to an election, to place a disclaimer on their qualified digital ad and file qualified digital communications disclosure report. This is in line with the disclosure laws currently in place for TV, radio, and newspaper advertising, and merely bring our state’s political spending laws into the 21st century of digital communications.
Read the full article in the Charlotte Observer.
