What do we do about the lies in political advertisements?

There are plenty of lies and exaggerations on both sides of the political isle in our upcoming elections. I am not talking about generalizations like (I believe in smaller government or I will work hard to get rid of waste in Washington). I am talking about statements about a candidate’s claim he served in the Marines or graduated from Yale or that his opponent was convicted of child abuse.

There are organizations like Factcheck.org that do a reasonable job of checking the facts and calling out the liars in these political campaigns. But they only check some of the ads and not enough people verify potentially deceitful ads with the fact checkers to make lying an ineffective strategy today.

What’s the answer? Perhaps a mechanism for a quick appeal to a new independent Fair Campaign Office (FCO). I make this suggestion as a small government advocate. A semi-judicial process would be established for a campaign to get a quick determination on the truthfulness of an ad.

For example, Harry’s campaign asserts in a television advertisement that Harry’s opponent Bill was convicted of distributing child pornography. Bill’s campaign lodges a complaint with the FCO. Both sides then post a bond with the FCO. The Fair Campaign Office can take a number of actions: 1) Require the ad to be suspended until it can be investigated by the Fair Campaign office (if it appears in the initial review as false) 2) The FCO investigates in more detail and determines within a few days if the ad is materially false 3) If the ad is deemed materially false then whatever Harry spent on television spots, he must pay three times that to the FCO (out of a bond previously posted) 4a) One third of these funds go to Bill’s campaign 4b) Another third of these funds would be spent by the FCO to immediately advertise that they have found the advertisement materially false and 4c) The FCO retains one third of these funds for administrative expenses.

The appeal process would be run like the challenge system in the NFL. You only get to throw the red flag twice unsuccessfully in a campaign. If a campaign challenges the truth of an ad and loses the appeal two times then they are done with appeals for the season. Each time a campaign loses an appeal they also must pay the Fair Campaign Office three times the advertising spent on the ads in dispute (out of their bond previously posted). If the appeal is unsuccessful (in other words the ad is deemed truthful), then the FCO keeps one third of this amount for their administration costs, spends one third of the funds to advertise that they found the ad materially truthful and hands over the remaining one third to the opposing campaign.

It would obviously be critical that the FCO had the ability to respond quickly and make fair and objective decisions. So when one of these disputes came up then both of the campaigns would have to provide their supporting evidence quickly as well.

But the two strike rule would apply to the liars as well. If a campaign was found to have broadcast two ads with material false statements then they could only run new ads after they had reviewed the prospective ads with the FCO and the opposing campaigns at least a week prior to running the ad. In these cases the opposing campaign could challenge the veracity of the ad prior to the ad being broadcast.

Finally, during the last few days of a campaign (let’s call it one week), if a campaign ran a new advertisement that was successfully challenged by the opposition as untrue, then the election results would be nullified (if the liar had won) and a new election would be held a month later. The cost of the additional public election would be borne by the lying campaign.

We have rules for compensating those damaged by liars in the general public via libel & defamation laws. These laws compensate the injured party for the injuries created by “liars” that go public with their lies. But in the case of lies in public elections there is no protection for the public and the public ends up with a liar representing them. The liars are rewarded with paid trips to Washington DC.

Historically the voters have relied on the media to independently investigate and expose lying campaigns. But this does not work very well today. Lies spread much faster than the truth and once the damage is done it is hard to undo. And political campaigns based on lies are a major distortion to our democracy.