Today the Senate Committee on Government and Elections held a hearing on a bill proposed by Governor Jay Inslee, SB 5843, that would criminalize certain expressions of speech related to the elections process and the outcome of elections.  Besides the bill’s obvious First Amendment problems (See our Legislative Memo on the bill here), the bill would create harm by making people even more fearful and suspicious about discussing the process of self-government.

We have published a full analysis of the bill, available here.  I presented our findings to the Committee, very briefly, since testimony was limited to one minute per person.  Here’s what I said.

“My name is Paul Guppy, Vice President of the Washington Policy Center.  Our detailed analysis of this bill is at Washingtonpolicy.org, so we’ve written a longer Legislative Memo, but I’ll just hit one quick point here in the interest of time.

“The way this bill is drafted or its intent is that it undermines the norms of our democracy.  The reason for that is it does not increase confidence in the outcome of an election, it actually creates more suspicion, when people are not allowed to debate the outcome of elections honestly.

“For example in 2004, as we all know, there was a very close governor’s race in our state.  The counts and re-counts lasted more than a month, and that was exactly the time period when we needed the maximum openness and transparency in debate, about what was happening with that election, than ever.  If this bill [SB 5843] had been in effect officials and candidates would have been restricted or chilled or fearful about what they could say about that election.

“So our bottom line analysis in responding to the governor’s presentation, is that you can’t force people to accept the outcome of an election.  That has to be based on persuasion, honesty and open speech.  Thank you very much.”

The governor says he wants to limit free speech because he feels our democracy is under threat.  If that’s true then we need our First Amendment freedoms now more than ever. 

The ability to hear independent and honest opinions without fear allows the public to hold those in power accountable, and to assure ourselves that elections in Washington have integrity, are fact-checked and are fraud-free.  Without unhampered free speech and the ability to safely consider the broadest-possible range of views, we can never know whether we are really governing ourselves through fair elections or not.

Watch my testimony here:

Governor Inslee's testimony can be seen here: