“I guess it was inevitable, as political tribalism rises, that the impulse would also grow to simply suppress stuff that one camp or another sees as wrong or dangerous or uncomfortable,” Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat writes here.
Republicans certainly are doing that with their laws criminalizing protest and their drive to ban books that make white people feel bad about atrocities against people of color.
But Westneat complains Washington Democrats are joining the censorship party. His specific beef is Senate Bill 5843, which proposes jailing “any local or state elected official or candidate who makes false statements about the Washington state election system or past local election results,” although “to qualify for prosecution, the lies must further be ‘directed toward inciting or producing imminent lawless action.’” (Read the draft bill in its entirety here.)
Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) says, “I believe it will be constitutional, because … this speech is the type of speech that can promote violence.” I’m not so sure it’ll pass judicial muster. But in any case, if someone can be prosecuted for inciting violence like the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, why not prosecute them under existing laws covering that? This proposed law seems redundant, a point Westneat makes further on in his op-ed.
It’s a stupid idea.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the motivation behind it. About that, Westneat says:
“Well I’m 100 percent in agreement with the governor that the stolen election crusade from Republicans for the past year has been both shameless and damaging. … But outlawing it? That’s a version of the ‘lock them up!’ type of response that liberals rightly criticized Trump for …. ‘You don’t deal with rising authoritarianism by threatening to put opposing politicians in jail,’ says Jeff Kosseff, a … law professor at the U.S. Naval Academy … critiquing Inslee’s proposal online. ‘Other countries throw politicians in jail for their speech. We don’t.’”
I agree. This isn’t just a slippery slope; it’s a boulder rolling down a slippery slope. The fact Republicans are doing it doesn’t make it right or wise (I instinctively assume the opposite).
Speaking of Republicans, Westneat brings up the example of Brad Klippert, a GOP state representative from Tri-Cities who’s running for Congress, and is “one of the state’s leading dabblers in the stolen election conspiracy.” Westneat says, “So here he is, working hard to muzzle ideas he doesn’t like, even as Inslee, across the Capitol rotunda, is trying to muzzle him.” Klippert may deserve the goose-gander treatment, but we can’t do this to him without also doing it to ourselves. Either everybody has free speech or nobody does.
There’s also this problem: “None of this muzzling will work; it never does. It will force the conversations underground. In the case of the stolen election nonsense, I could see it even magnifying its conspiratorial power. People will say: ‘The government banned talking about it, so there must be something there.’”
Westneat’s solution? “It’s a cliché, but the answer to all this is: More speech. More talk about our checkered history, not less. More debunking of lies. Society is struggling with a fire hose of misinformation, but we’re not going to be able to regulate or censor our way out of that. I … hoped … we were made of sturdier stuff than this. [We should] at least aspire to be a marketplace of ideas.” I’m with him.
The problem is that the proposed act is unconstitutional under the US and Washington State constitutions on its face. Yet such an act once passed might be Washington law for decades simply because no Prosecutor will wield it, Or one does and the accused pleads out or is unable to afford the appeals. Then it appears to be good law and will be more used until finally the courts do what should have done long before. Or politicians have the gall to kill this using common sense or get rid of it quickly should it pass. It is not hard to get bills through our legislature as hundreds can be passed in a short time and many bills are not properly scrutinized by our law makers. So a law like this can be passed and signed by Ensley all great political fun and these bils often are bipartisan. So if this bill passes we should all be uncomfortable as it could be around a very long time and be the law of the land. [Edited comment]
It’s not unconstitutional until a court says it is, and the legislature has to pass it before courts will look at it. And I suggest you spell Inslee’s name properly if you want to be taken seriously.