Richard Perque is running for traffic court judge in New Orleans. A lot of my friends are supporting him. I voted for him. Oh,and there is something else unrelated to his qualifications for Judge: he is openly gay. Yes, he shares the fact on his campaign website. But in reality it has nothing to do with his qualifications.
Other people disagree. For some reason they believe that because he is openly gay he would have some problem determining if someone was speeding or not. A hate piece has just been mailed out suggesting that people should think “long and hard” about this candidate.
The flyer was mailed out by the “Committee for Common Decency”. While such hatred is all to common in Louisiana, I find nothing decent about it. According to the above article, there is no such committee in the State of Louisiana. There are laws in Louisiana that require certain reporting for paid political activities (especially this close to an election). I doubt this mailer was reported to the state. And that leads me to the question posed in the title of this post.
If a printing company is creating a political flyer, shouldn’t it be required to affirm that the information on the flyer is factual (at least the required information about who paid for it)? If they are not, then you wind up with anonymous hate flyers like this mailed out. If the law doesn’t require printing companies to verify this information, it should.
It’s a bit of a stretch to say printers should have to verify any facts. That’s not their job. I think an easier solution would be to make all official campaign ads be approved by some entity or organization that verifies the claims made in a political ad. You would probably still have trouble with things like this, however. As hateful as that letter is someone has the right to say it. There’s no way to shield the world from idiots with a microphone. Of course there’s no way to trace it back to a person or organization. They would be shunned. If a politician put this out officially they could easily lose the election and any hope of a future in politics.
Maybe not “any” facts but at least facts pertaining to “paid for” comments. There should be a record of what organization is funding it and who in that organization authorized the mailing.