Candidates for County Board president spent more than $1 million on television advertising in the weeks leading up to the Feb. 2 primary.
And though television attacks ads were few and interest groups stayed off the airwaves, the same can’t be said for the Internet, an unbridled and little regulated bastion of political communication.
Specifically, YouTube, the video sharing site, became a forum for not only candidates to publish campaign ads, but also for others to anonymously share political videos.
In one instance, it provided a forum for a nameless who had a bone to pick with Democratic nominee Toni Preckwinkle.
The user, called PhoneyProgressive, posted two ads skewering Preckwinkle in the days leading up to the election. One featured an ominous female voice, asking if Preckwinkle was “one of us,” juxtaposing that phrase against a photo of Preckwinkle, who is black, and her white husband.
A second attempts to show Preckwinkle as a heartless friend of developers, accusing her of evicting seniors. The Temptations song “Balls of Confusion” plays throughout the two-minute spot.
The video descriptions indicate they are aimed at 4th Ward residents, and distributed on behalf of County Board President Todd Stroger, though there is no official disclosure of his involvement. PhoneyProgressive did not respond to a request for comment.
While campaign finance laws require groups that spend or receive more than $3,000 to disclose their participation in political advertising, YouTube ads are often less up-front about who's behind them.
“We tend to reserve the word ‘Wild West’ for the state of Illinois,” joked David Morrison, deputy director the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. “But YouTube and the Internet as a whole is a brand new domain for campaign finance.”
Anonymous political commentary is part and parcel of the Internet, and raises questions of ethics, accountability and enforcement.
“This is a tough circumstance for the election code to work out,” says Morrison. “I don’t even know if YouTube was around (when it was written). The Internet is causing a whole host of issues for campaign reform.”
Still, Miller says voters should be able to know who or what is behind a new media campaign.
“Knowing who paid for an ad or how an ad was assembled … you can’t do that without knowing who stands behind the thing,” he says.
The state election code does not address YouTube, though it identifies Internet content for or against a candidate as “political communication.” The United States Supreme Court has ruled in favor of anonymous groups distributing campaign literature, says David Franklin, a professor at the DePaul Unviersity School of Law, who specializes in First Amendment law.
“There’s a First Amendment right to anonymous campaign material,” he says. “The Internet makes it much more high-stakes. You obviously don’t have to pass out your flier hand-to-hand. You can get it out there more quickly and widely. I don’t know which way that cuts.”
With millions of videos living on YouTube, it’s impossible for the state board of elections to identify violations without someone first registering a complaint.
“It strictly only requires political committees to disclose who is paying for political communication,” says Sharon Steward, director of campaign disclosure for the Illinois State Board of Elections. “It’s something that’s out there and it’s changing constantly.”
The Preckwinkle campaign was aware of the videos, but decided to ignore them. With such a small reach, it wasn’t worth their time, said campaign manager Scott Cisek. As of this writing, the videos had generated about 1,000 total views.
“It’s the Web 2.0 equivalent of the Aunt Jemima parking ticket,” he said, referring to a racially-tinged flier distributed by the Soldiers for Stroger group. Cisek called the ads a “last-minute cynical attempt to get some movement.”
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