Assemblyman Thiele: Voters Deserve to Know Who’s Paying for Digital Political Ads
Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. (I, D, WF, WE - Sag Harbor) announced that he helped pass legislation, known as the Democracy Protection Act, to increase transparency and integrity in New York’s electoral process by requiring that all political communications, including internet and digital, disclose the organization or individual paying for the communication (A.9930).
“Interference in our election process with the spread of misinformation has been threatening the foundations of our democracy,” said Assemblyman Thiele. “This type of subversion hinders voters’ ability to make informed decisions and breeds discord and divisiveness. With more and more people getting news and information online and through social media, we need to make sure voters know who’s behind the political ads that are popping up everywhere.”
The Democracy Protection Act holds paid internet and digital advertising, and all other political communications, to the same disclosure and attribution standards as television and radio communications. Under the act, all political communications by a political committee, including advertisements posted online or to social media, would need to include a “paid for by” statement followed by the name of the political committee making the expenditure. If the advertisement is too small to contain the statement, it must contain a link to another webpage where the information is prominently displayed.
The bill also requires each online platform to maintain and make available online a complete record of all political communications made by independent expenditure committees, including the audience targeted by the advertisement, the number of views generated by it and the name, address and phone number of the person purchasing the ad.
Further, the Assembly legislation prohibits any foreign national or foreign government agent from registering as an independent expenditure committee for the purpose of purchasing political communications in state or local elections. In testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Facebook revealed that Russian-linked content reached up to 126 million Americans.1 Twitter discovered 3,814 accounts created by a Russian group for the purposes of influencing the presidential election and sowing division, as well as more than 50,000 Russian-linked automated or “bot” accounts.2,3 By passing this legislation, New York is taking a stand to protect democracy and tell foreign governments they have no place in our electoral system, added Thiele.
“If someone wants to try to influence our elections, they need to take responsibility for it,” Thiele said. “Voters deserve to know exactly who the information – and in many cases, false information – is coming from.”
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1. abcnews.go.com/US/facebook-twitter-google-testify-russian-election-interference/story?id=50833632
3. judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Edgett%20Appendix%20to%20Responses.pdf