The Constitution and the courts have granted candidates wide latitude to broadcast their slogans, promises and attack ads to voters — even when voters have no interest in hearing those messages. That's why Americans can be inundated with political junk mail and robocalls in an election year.

But it's not exactly free speech when the recipients have to pay for it, as they do when campaigns send them text messages — a relatively new phenomenon.

For example, during the recent Michigan primary, Republican voters received cryptic, unsolicited messages from a mysterious source on their phones critical of candidate Mitt Romney with no information about who the sponsor might be. Such messages can cost recipients 10 to 25 cents each if their plans don't include an allotment of free texts.

Voters in Colorado also were hit with unsolicited anti-Romney text messages this year. Before that, the tactic popped up in several congressional elections in 2009 and 2010 and in a state legislative race in Virginia last year.

Political action committee consultants defend the practice, saying it sends unsolicited political emails — which is legal — to a list of addresses, some of which happen to be cellphones.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act prohibits unsolicited messages to cellphones unless the owner expressly gives consent in advance. The consumer privacy rules that carve out exceptions for political speech don't apply when the receiver of the call or the message has to pay for it.

It's time in this case to reverse those charges.

REPRINTED FROM THE NEW BERN SUN JOURNAL

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