End Comment Fraud at the Cost of a Stamp

The New York Attorney General’s office found that of more than 22 million comments filed in response to the Federal Communication Commission’s hotly contested 2017 “net neutrality” repeal, nearly 18 million were fraudulent. A 19-year-old computer science student filed nearly eight million of them using automated software. According to the Administrative Procedure Act, federal agencies like the FCC must give notice to the public when they propose to write new rules. Then the public can comment on those proposals. The agency must review all public comments before publishing an order detailing final rules, along with the legal and policy rationales for enacting them. Before the advent of electronic commenting, comments on proposed rules were submitted through the mail. The cost of mailing a letter served as a barrier to fraud. By introducing a small fee for electronic comments—say, the price of a postage stamp, currently 55 cents—agencies could reduce comment fraud.

[The authors are fellows at the Hudson Institute]