Anonymity once protected civil-rights supporters

The Arizona Republic in general and Laurie Roberts in particular have a thing about transparency, the exposure of the identities of donors to independent-expenditure committees, most recently in your reporting on the dispute between the Secretary of State’s Office and the allegedly non-partisan Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

ROBERTS: 'Dark money' Ducey courts the Kochs

Of course, transparency is not the motive behind this effort; rather the real purpose is to discourage donors to these mostly conservative committees by making public their contributions. In this you are urging a tactic adopted 60 years ago by racist Southern Democrats to attempt to stop the activities of the NAACP.

In 1955, Alabama demanded donor and membership information of the NAACP as a condition for doing business in the state. The state specifically wanted the names of residents of Alabama in order to, obviously, identify them as “n…..-lovers” and to ostracize them from polite/racist society.

The Supreme Court ruled the state’s quest an unconstitutional violation of freedom of speech and association. Recently the Supreme Court permitted the disclosure of donor lists in connection with the California Marriage initiative with predictable adverse results to some of the donors.

One CEO of a company he had founded lost his position over his $1,000 contribution to the pro-traditional marriage side. Thus disclosure is a bad idea and will have the effect of discouraging political speech.

Accordingly, I applaud the efforts by the Secretary of State’s Office to rein in the Citizen’s Commission. Everyone should be free to support the causes they believe in without fear of harassment, ridicule and other forms of social obloquy, if not worse.

A person is known by the company he keeps; you are in very bad company in your pursuit of transparency.

— Edwin A. Kilburn, Scottsdale