OPINION:
Maryland is very much a bastion of one-party liberalism, with Democrats controlling every elected statewide office and holding commanding majorities in both Houses of the legislature. But “progressives” are very worried that Maryland could become a two-party state. So, with Attorney General Doug Gansler taking the lead, they came up with a plan to make it as easy as possible to get likely Democratic voters to the polls — and, disgracefully, they raised the specter of using the power of the state to threaten to silence anyone who gets in their way.
Mr. Gansler put together something called “The Attorney General’s Task Force On Voting Irregularities,” packed it with liberals like veteran Annapolis activist Carl Snowden, liberal attorneys and law professors, a newly enfranchised ex-felon and Deborah Jeon, legal director of the ACLU of Maryland; the task force was asked to come up with a plan to fix everything that’s wrong with the way elections are conducted in the state. Parts of the report consist of generalized complaints that can’t really be confirmed or refuted. For example, “Individuals reported to the Task Force that police squad cars and officers nevertheless were deployed and remained at polling places for considerable periods of time. These actions can have the effect of depressing voter turnout and intimidating voters attempting to exercise their right to participate in the voting process.” But modern-day Maryland isn’t 1964 Mississippi, and the report provides no evidence (only innuendo) that it is. Nor does it provide any evidence that police in modern-day Maryland are “intimidating” anyone out of voting.
But buried deep inside the report, task force members make clear why they and Mr. Gansler are making this flimsy argument: They need a pretext to silence people who oppose them. On page 14, the report contains a long-winded political sermon about the evils of “false and misleading political speech,” and recommend that all polling places include a hotline number in Mr. Gansler’s office and the State Board of Elections so that voters can report when “deceptive materials” are distributed on Election Day. There’s nothing in the report about hiring state and local police SWAT teams to nab miscreants who traffic in “deceptive” political materials, but judging from the tone, it probably is not too far off. For now, the task force notes that Baltimore City Delegate Sandy Rosenberg and state Sen. Lisa Gladden have introduced legislation in Annapolis banning false and misleading campaign materials.
Task-force members note that regulating false and misleading political speech “is not an easy task,” and of course they’re right: Like the rest of the United States, Maryland is governed by the First Amendment, which protects the right of politicians to say stupid, foolish untruths. And it has elections, where adult voters get to sort these things out for themselves.
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