DEMOCRAT WHO SOUGHT TO REGULATE DRUDGE RUNNING TO REPRESENT SILICON VALLEY IN CALIFORNIA SENATE

The former Federal Election Commission member who sought to regulate the Drudge Report and other online political speech is running to represent a district that encompasses Silicon Valley in the California Senate, according to a Monday report.

“I care a lot about California, and I want to do things that are in the public interest,” former FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel said in an interview with the San Jose Spotlight. “I’m interested only in doing what’s good for the people. I’ve been doing so much in the area of campaign finance and it’s influenced me a lot.”

Ravel served on the FEC from 2013-17, and gained a reputation for pushing new rules to regulate online political speech. Republicans said the rules were aimed at requiring anyone who posted political content online — including on social media and on websites such as the Drudge Report — to disclose their activity to the Feds.

Ravel has continued to push the issue since she left the commission. “We know that there’s a lot of campaigning that’s moved to the internet, whether it’s through fake news or just outright advertising,” she said in a 2017 speech at UC Berkeley. “There is almost no regulation of this … the disclosure that we expect as to who is behind campaigns is not going to exist soon.”

Read the entire article