Here is my response to Bruce Cain’s essay for Cato Unbound. My response begins:

Bruce Cain has picked an odd time to raise concerns about the dangers of disclosure. It comes as we have just completed a record-breaking $4 billion midterm election season, after the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the Federal Election Commission have freed corporate and union money from longstanding campaign finance limits, and after political committees and other political groups have found ways to avoid effective disclosure of their contributors. The conversation should be about why we need more disclosure, not less, and why it is that Congress is unlikely to restore effective disclosure laws in time for the 2012 elections.
Cain’s concern is different: he worries that excessive disclosure, especially in the Internet era, will chill political speech, and that attempts to reimpose effective disclosure laws are motivated by an improper desire to equalize the amount of political speech. He calls for a system of “semi-disclosure,” whereby certain campaign finance data is disclosed to campaign finance regulators but not to the general public. In this brief response, I make three points. First, in offering his analysis, Cain understates the value of disclosure. Second, Cain is surely right that the Internet era does change the constitutional calculus, which is why scholars supporting campaign finance regulation, including Richard Briffault and me, also support the kind of system Cain suggests. Third, the most significant roadblock to Cain’s suggested reform, as shown by John Samples’s response in this symposium, is the fear by conservatives of government audits as a substitute enforcement mechanism.

Through the rest of the month, Cain, John Samples, Nikki Willoghby, and I will be debating the disclosure issue in follow-up blog posts at Cato Unbound.