The Seattle city election code requires candidates to disclose names, addresses, and employers of campaign donors. These reports are open to the public. As such, they are a convenient “enemies list” for government agencies, employers, private spies, and right-wing groups and individuals. Averill explained in her request that the protection of the privacy rights of her campaign donors was still necessary as “public disclosure could expose them to threats, harassment or reprisals from private parties or the government.”

At the hearing, Averill’s attorneys presented examples of harassment against FSP members and supporters since the 2003 city elections, including threats made from a neo-Nazi website after a local radio station urged listeners to harass the FSP headquarters. At the hearing the FSP also noted the September 2004 arson attack on the Socialist Workers Party campaign headquarters in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, as evidence to base its appeal for exemption.

In 2004 U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik upheld the privacy rights of the FSP after the Seattle SEEC had denied Averill’s request for exclusion from disclosure in the city’s 2003 elections.

Lasnik ruled, “the Court finds that the compelled disclosure of the names, addresses, and/or employers of contributors for plaintiffs’ 2003 campaign would violate plaintiffs’ rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association.”

“I wholeheartedly support the exemption for the FSP,” said Chris Hoeppner, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Seattle. “The SWP has fought and won an exemption from the federal disclosure requirement from the Federal Election Commission for its presidential candidates through 2008.” Hoeppner added that the party’s fight for exemption is part of its decades-long support for the right of workers, farmers, and their organizations to engage in political activity, including elections, free from government and right-wing harassment.

Despite the unanimous vote of the SEEC to uphold the non-disclosure rights of the FSP candidate in this year’s election for city council, several members of the commission expressed their sharp disagreement with Judge Lasnik’s ruling. The FSP must now go before the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission on April 26 to request an exemption as well.
 
 
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Communist League candidates defend a woman’s right to choose
2005 Socialist Workers Party election campaigns  
 
 
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