Day: March 11, 2008

Tonight is all about disclaimers, so that’s our focus. SEIU COPE ran ads supporting Barack Obama for President.  SEIU COPE’s full name, Service Employees International Union Committee on Public Education, is a mouthful, so I can see why they would want to abbreviate it both in the spoken and written required disclaimers, as they did on the version of the ad on youtube.  The FEC seems to condone abbreviations of PAC names and “PAC” itself under many circumstances, yet appears to insist that disclaimers include the full name of the PAC sponsoring a communication, rather than an abbreviation.

American Leadership Project’s Form 9 is available. 

Disclaimers are everywhere in campaign finance law.  Leave them off and you run serious risk of a complaint and fine.  Skeptic’s Eye notes one recent case where pre-probable cause and probable cause conciliation failed to conclude the matter.    The case is also an interesting data point for respondents considering “rolling the dice” to “see what a court will say.”  Maybe another point is, as one Commisioner used to say, “What’s the point when you can’t read these disclaimers when you’re going 55 mph down the highway?”