
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 9, 1995                   TAG: 9510090116
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DON'T MUZZLE POLITICAL GROUPS

CONSERVATIVE and right-to-life groups in Virginia are on solid ground when they say the courts should not prohibit them from distributing voter guides during political campaigns. They tread mushier terrain when they argue immunity from registering with the state as political committees.

These issues are raised by representatives of the Virginia Society for Human Life, Concerned Women for America and the Virginia Leadership Council in two federal lawsuits filed in Roanoke this week against the state Democratic Party. Three times in recent years, the party has won court orders barring distribution of voter guides in Fairfax and Richmond. The basis for the injunctions has been the failure of such groups to register as political committees.

Excuse us, but do the courts issuing such injunctions possess even the most basic understanding of the First Amendment? You have to wonder.

The purpose of requiring political committees to register with the state Board of Elections is to add information to the public forum, not inhibit its flow. Prohibiting campaign-advocacy groups from distributing their material to enforce otherwise legitimate campaign laws is like amputating a patient's arm to cure a hangnail.

An after-the-fact investigation by the state Board of Elections would have been an appropriate way to handle the Democrats' complaint. Prior restraint of the groups' rights to distribute their guides, however partisan, was shameful and an outrage.

Indeed, prior restraint is so drastic a restriction on First Amendment freedoms that it should be reserved, if used at all, only for genuinely urgent emergencies: to prevent life-threatening publication of wartime troop movements, that sort of thing. The failure of a political committee to register with the state simply doesn't qualify.

To be sure, the act of registering is not unduly burdensome. If printing and distributing brochures urging people to vote a certain way isn't political advocacy, what is? And if the state is not allowed to require disclosure of the existence of groups spending more than $100 to influence the outcome of an election, how can it set any rules for fair political conduct - including campaign-finance and lobbying disclosure rules - by anyone?

Obviously, the same rules must apply to all similarly situated individuals or groups, without regard to their viewpoint. But this appears not to be an issue in these cases. What may be an issue, if only tacitly, is a frequent reluctance by campaign-advocacy groups of all political persuasions to acknowledge that they are engaging in politics. This both reflects and contributes to the unfortunate tendency in contemporary America to think of politics as alien, as something smelly that only other people engage in.

There's such a thing as smelly politics, of course. Too often forgotten, though, is that politics also consists of honorable attempts to promote election outcomes that practitioners sincerely believe best for the state's or nation's well-being.

Any such attempts, honorable or not, shouldn't be restrained prior to the fact by courts.

by CNB