Senate president's new approach to social media discourse deserves to be state policy

Senate President Peter Micciche has given all state employees—including Sen. Lora Reinbold and others who seek to stifle critics— a good lesson in how to deal with comments on social media—stop blocking people just because they disagree with you.

Many government officials have little to do with the social media accounts created and written by their employees.

Micciche is not an active Twitter user. He has had 13 tweets posted under his name since one of his state employees created the Micciche account in 2014.

Micciche says he learned that a constituent had been blocked on Oct. 23 from seeing and commenting on his account only after the constituent filed a lawsuit against him. The constituent had posted critiques of his response to the pandemic.

It appears that the Micciche staff didn’t want to see what she had to say.

“I directed that she be immediately unblocked,” Micciche said.

The Senate president said he won’t block anyone who is civil.

“I will not limit access for constituents to open dialogue unless discussion becomes uncivil, threatening, obscene or for unsubstantiated criminal accusations,” Micciche says.

The constituent dropped the lawsuit. “I appreciated him being able to listen to what I had to say and meet with me,” Bethany Wortham told the Peninsula Clarion in mid-November.

Micciche wrote a detailed statement about the incident and why he believes that anyone should be allowed to comment, as long as there are no personal attacks, obscene comments, threats, unsubstantiated criminal claims, fake pages and scams.

He said he hopes to “serve as an example for others that may feel that silencing disagreement is acceptable. It isn’t.”

“This post is a call to others that have been entrusted to represent constituent grouips to be open to opposing viewpoints,” he said. “You may actually learn something that helps you to better represent your constituents.”

Here is Micciche’s complete statement. He outlines several points that should be elements in improving state policy to recognize the rights of constituents.