Abracadabra and Shazam – Are they different?

The Colorado Supreme Court weighed in yesterday on the “magic words” of campaign finance. There is a set of words that, if included in campaign ads, mean you have to disclose where funding came from for the ad. The list includes things like “vote for” or “defeat.”

So if you’re savvy enough not to use the words on the list, and by savvy I mean you spent two minutes rewriting your ad, you don’t have to disclose your funding to voters. Saying “I think Jim Lovely is great. He has done so much for Colorado” instead of  “Vote for Jim Lovely” is the difference between being a secret funder and telling voters who you are.

When we passed Amendment 27  a decade ago, Colorado voters stated clearly that we want to know who is spending what on our elections. These kinds of semantic arguments fly in the face of voter approved instructions on disclosure.