Maine’s Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices should disclose the names of the people behind the controversial Cutler Files, a campaign web site set up to smear Eliot Cutler, a candidate for governor in 2010.

In a contradictory ruling Monday, the commission fined one of two anonymous authors of the site for breaking Maine’s disclosure laws, but also allowed both authors to remain anonymous pending a possible court appeal.

However, at least one of the authors of the site has broken the law and the public should get, at the very least, that person’s name.

Given a choice, every lawbreaker would like to remain anonymous. But that is not the way our transparent system of government works.

What’s more, the simple fact that the Ethics Commission took up this case and issued a ruling shows that the web site fell under the guidelines established under the law.

Those guidelines are very clear that election campaign materials of all sorts need to be properly documented. Instead, the Cutler Files were simply a poison-pen missive issued by people too gutless to stand behind their allegations.

Based on testimony, it is clear the Cutler Files tried to mislead readers of the site and potential voters both by omission of information required under the state’s disclosure laws and also by outright fabrication.

Based on sworn testimony, we now know the authors were not unconnected citizen journalists and researchers concerned about Cutler’s background, as they claimed on the site — but either campaign workers for opposing candidates and/or family members of opposition candidates.

Some have likened the Cutler Files to the Federalist Papers, the historic anonymous documents advocating adoption of the U.S. Constitution.

The comparison is absurd. None of the creators of the Cutler Files feared for their lives, they simply wanted to distance themselves from a smear campaign.

The only problem the authors of the Cutler Files truly faced is they couldn’t openly run a smear campaign and avoid the appearance of being backstabbing cowards — something that would have reflected badly on their preferred candidates.

Instead, using a shield of anonymity, they were taking nuggets of truth and twisting them into outright lies. The site was pure dirty politics.

No wonder the candidates associated with these operatives wanted to distance themselves — they will now claim, of course, they had no knowledge of the authors’ work on their behalf.  We’re not so sure.

This is exactly the kind of issue that begs an Ethics Commission ruling. No one’s right to free speech, anonymous or otherwise, is being curtailed. This isn’t a giant Constitutional debate as some would have us believe.

Instead it’s a debate over what kind of elections Maine will have going forward and whether the questionable Cutler Files ethics will be discouraged or encouraged.

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