Universities issue apology letter about campaign mailers

Political practices commissioner wants a full investigation

______

The presidents of Stanford University and Dartmouth College have agreed to send apology letters to 100,000 Montana voters who received political mailers that were part of an experiment by the universities’ political science departments.

The mailers were made to look like an official Montana state government document and had images of the Great Seal of Montana and the Voters Guide symbol used by the Montana Secretary of State’s office and the words “2014 Montana General Election Voter Information Guide” on both sides.

The matter initially drew the attention of Montana state officials after the mailer showed up in Kalispell, Missoula, Billings and Helena. Secretary of State Linda McCulloch held a press conference on the matter on Oct. 23 and made it clear her office never gave any such group permission to use the Great Seal of the State of Montana or the Voters Guide symbol.

According to the researchers’ own abstract, the experiment was aimed at seeing if information provided to voters in nonpartisan elections could influence how they vote.

The mailer shows two line graphs ranging from “More liberal” to “More conservative” for two nonpartisan Montana Supreme Court justice races. President Barack Obama is at one end of the graph, and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney is at the other end. The names of justice candidates Jim Rice, W. David Herbert, Mike Wheat and Lawrence VanDyke are also shown on the graphs.

McCulloch filed a formal complaint with Office of the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices on Oct. 24. She cited four state laws that may have been broken, including three involving campaign regulations.

In a partial decision issued by Commissioner Jon Motl on Oct. 29, Motl said it was his idea for the university presidents to issue the apology as a mitigating step before Election Day.

Stanford University president John Hennessy and Dartmouth College president Philip Hanlon agreed and made arrangements to send the letter. All 100,000 letters are expected to arrive before Election Day at a cost of $52,000, Motl said. But that’s not the end of the case.

“The Commissioner retains for investigation and decision the entire range of issues raised by and related to the complaint filed in this matter,” Motl wrote.

He noted that both universities are represented by attorneys in the case and Stanford University “has launched an outside counsel investigation.” Motl said he will consider the results of those investigations as part of his final decision.

The experiment undertaken by Stanford University professors Jonathan Rodden and Adam Bonica and Dartmouth College professor Kyle Dropp was approved by the Dartmouth Institutional Review Board but not the Stanford board. The scientists were funded with a $250,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and a matching $100,000 grant from Stanford University.

The experiment also was conducted in two other states. In September, 66,000 voters in New Hampshire received information about candidates in one congressional race. In the week of Oct. 23, mailers were sent to 143,000 voters in two congressional races in California. The Dartmouth Staff newspaper reported that “the project has not sparked controversy in those states.”

But after three election cycles in Montana with investigations of “dark money” supporting campaigns, and with the state’s century-old Corrupt Practices Act recently struck down by the same U.S. Supreme Court that approved unlimited corporate spending in the Citizens United case, Montanans are sensitive about campaign “meddling.”

That’s the term Sen. Jon Tester used when he wrote to the university presidents about their political science experiment. Tester, who wants to see a Constitutional Amendment to overrule the Citizens United case, has called for a full investigation and warned about legal ramifications. He sent a letter to Chief Postal Inspector Guy Cottrell on Oct. 24 asking him to see if the flyers violated the Deceptive Mailings Prevention Act of 1990.

One Montanan with an interesting perspective on the matter is Montana attorney and visiting Vermont Law School professor Jack Tuholske. He told The Dartmouth Staff that attempting to place Montana Supreme Court candidates in ideological camps was “despicable.”

“I don’t care what sophisticated methods the professors used,” Tuholske said. “If they would come out of their ivory tower and open their eyes and see the practicalities in a state like Montana, putting a Supreme Court justice who has a very complicated record on a card next to Barack Obama is tampering with the election because Obama is not well liked in Montana, and this is just guilt by association.”

According to the researchers, their project uses publicly available campaign finance information to see where a nonpartisan candidate’s supporters have also donated money. They then provided that information to voters in specific precincts to see if voter turnout changed.