It’s tempting to think that this tactic won’t work on the politically savvy people who pay attention to PAC names. But our research shows otherwise.
To test the effects of deceptive PAC names, we conducted a controlled online experiment involving more than 650 participants recruited through Prolific, an online academic research studies platform. The sample was balanced by gender and diverse in age, though participants were somewhat more educated than the general U.S. population.
Participants evaluated four proposed laws before and after learning that each law was sponsored by a PAC. The PAC’s name was manipulated to be either congruent with the law’s ideological direction, incongruent with it or politically neutral. For example, a left-leaning environmental proposal might be sponsored by a PAC called Save the Earth, Americans for Oil or Smith. By comparing participants’ ratings before and after exposure to those names, we measured the extent to which naming alone could alter attitudes toward otherwise identical proposals.
We found that misleading PAC names significantly shifted voter opinion. We also found that PAC names were most effective when they were deceptive. When participants who supported a particular law were told that an incongruently named PAC was sponsoring it, their support for that law dropped sharply, even when the law’s text sat right in front of them.
For example, when people who identified as left-leaning already favored a law that expedited refugee worker rights, their favorability ratings dropped sharply when they learned that the sponsoring PAC had a right-signaling name, Building the Wall. By contrast, learning that an aptly named PAC, Humane Treatment of Migrants, had sponsored the same law did not significantly affect the ratings of left-leaning people and barely affected the ratings of right-leaning people.
Our research also found that stronger partisans are more susceptible to this tactic. The more firmly someone identified with a political party, the greater the swing in their opinion when an inapt PAC name was introduced.
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Sophisticated voters are not automatically inoculated – if anything, their stronger priors make them more vulnerable to cues that appear to confirm or threaten their political identity.
What makes this especially troubling is where tactical names appear. Federal regulations require that PACs disclose their names “in a clear and conspicuous manner” in their political advertisements.
One might wonder whether tactical naming is just everyday politics. But weaponizing names introduces a hazard that goes far beyond ordinary negative campaigning.
A Republican group running ads against Democrats is unremarkable. A Republican group pretending to be a Democratic group to run those same ads is something different: It is a deliberate attempt to corrupt the informational environment in which voters decide whom to support.
Can anything be done?
Our research addressed this question, and our conclusions are sobering.
An outright ban on deceptive PAC names would face serious First Amendment obstacles. Naming a PAC is a form of expression that receives constitutional protection.
Courts have been reluctant to allow the government to dictate how political organizations present themselves. In Doctors for a Healthy Montana v. Fox in 2020, a federal district court struck down a Montana law requiring PACs to name themselves in a way that clearly identified the economic or special interest of a majority of their contributors. The court found that the statute did more than require disclosure of factual information; it unconstitutionally dictated “how that information must be packaged to the public.”
Required disclaimers, such as warnings to voters not to treat a PAC’s name as reliable evidence of its political identity, would probably be the most legally viable intervention. Even their constitutionality is uncertain, however.
That leaves two other remedies: transparency journalism and voter skepticism.
The reporting on Real Change PAC, which followed money through shell companies, traced email domains and mapped connections to the Congressional Leadership Fund, is the kind of investigative work that gives voters a fighting chance.
Voters can also follow a simple rule of thumb: When you see a PAC name, don’t treat it as gospel. Ask who is paying for it and who benefits.
Be mindful when the PAC is critical of a person or position that is supported by the very party that the PAC appears to serve. And remember that the most dangerous political actors don’t always attack your political allies.
Sometimes, they just steal their names.
Brian Sheppard, Professor of Law, Seton Hall University and Andrew Moshirnia, Associate Professor & Director of Education – Business Law & Taxation, Monash University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.