Interest Versus Express Advocacy?
The bright-line test doesn't cover forms of communication that are indirect or debatable. Consider this message to voters:
- If you like candidate X, you need to know he did Y.
In a communication like this, there is no mention about voting, however, the plain intention is to cast doubt on voters that supported candidate X.
Campaigning like this is typically called negative campaigning, making attack ads, or making thinly veiled promotional ads on the behalf of the candidate.
Read more about this topic: Issue Advocacy Ads
Famous quotes containing the words interest and/or express:
“As with our colleges, so with a hundred “modern improvements”; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting a compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I cannot express the pleasure I have in writing down my thoughts [in her journal], at the very moment—my opinion of people when I first see them, and how I alter, or how confirm myself in it—and I am much deceived in my foresight, if I shall not have very great delight in reading this living proof of my manner of passing my time, my sentiments, my thoughts of people I know, and a thousand other things in future.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)