A candidate or the treasurer of a candidate's principal campaign committee shall not accept a transfer or contribution from another candidate's principal campaign committee or from any other committee bearing the contributing candidate's name or title or otherwise authorized by the contributing candidate, unless the contributing candidate's principal campaign committee is being dissolved. A candidate's principal campaign committee shall not make a transfer or contribution to another candidate's principal campaign committee except when the contributing committee is being dissolved.
[a] candidate plaintiff no more has a duty to run in every election in order to keep his suit alive than an abortion plaintiff has a duty to become pregnant again at the earliest possible opportunity to keep her suit alive.
[A] candidate [for state senator] must not permit the candidate's principal campaign committee to accept aggregate contributions made or delivered by any individual, political committee, or political fund in excess of ... $500 in an election year for the office sought and $100 in the other years....
[A] limitation upon the amount that any one person or group may contribute to a candidate or political committee entails only a marginal restriction upon the contributor's ability to engage in free communication. A contribution serves as a general expression of support for the candidate and his views, but does not communicate the underlying basis for the support. The quantity of communication by the contributor does not increase perceptibly with the size of his contribution, since the expression rests solely on the undifferentiated symbolic act of contributing. At most the size of the contribution provides a rough index of the intensity of the contributor's support for the candidate. A limitation on the amount of money a person may give to a candidate or a campaign organization thus involves little direct restraint on his political communication, for it permits the symbolic expression of support evidenced by a contribution but does not in any way infringe the contributor's freedom to discuss candidates and issues.
A candidate must not permit the candidate's principal campaign committee to accept a contribution from a political committee, political fund, lobbyist, or large contributor, if the contribution will cause the aggregate contributions from those types of contributors to exceed an amount equal to 20 percent of the expenditure limits for the office sought by the candidate, provided that the 20 percent limit must be rounded to the nearest $100.8
A lobbyist must report each original source of money in excess of $500 in any year used for the purpose of lobbying to influence legislative action, administrative action, or the official action of a metropolitan governmental unit. The list must include the name, address and employer, or, if self employed, the occupation and principal place of business of each payer of money in excess of $500.
A person who participates in the preparation or dissemination of campaign material other than [for paid advertisements] that does not prominently include the name and address of the person or committee causing the material to be prepared or disseminated in a disclaimer ... is guilty of a misdemeanor.
Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation–and their ideas from suppression–at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse.
We do not ordinarily undertake to determine the constitutionality of state statutes since this office may deem it appropriate to intervene and defend challenges to the constitutionality of statutes. However, in the exceptional circumstance where the United States Supreme Court has unambiguously decided the constitutionality of a statute that cannot be fairly distinguished from the statute at issue and an opinion on the constitutionality of the statute would serve the public interest, we do not feel precluded from addressing such an inquiry. Such is the case here.
[M]y feeling is that, that uh, at least if the individual feels that they have to publicly make this statement, there'd be some restraint shown. I think to, to literally change our law to encourage people to anonymously get involved in *1069 political speech, in my opinion at least, is going to ratchet down even further the level of the debate during the elections and it, it's uh, something I certainly don't support, uh, unless we're under a direct threat by a court to do it.
This section does not apply to an individual who acts independently of any candidate, committee, political committee, or political fund and spends only from the individual's own resources a sum that is less than $300 in the aggregate to produce or distribute campaign material that is distributed at least 14 days before the election to which the material relates.
“Political committee” means an association whose major purpose is to influence the nomination or election of a candidate or to promote or defeat a ballot question, other than a principal campaign committee or a political party unit.
“Political fund” means an accumulation of dues or voluntary contributions by an association other than a political committee, principal campaign committee, or party unit, of the accumulation is collected or expended to influence the nomination or election of a candidate or to promote or defeat a ballot question.
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