If you think anonymous mailings designed to mislead voters about a candidate's record are a good thing, raise your hand.

Most Georgians would agree that participatory democracy has been battered enough with negative campaigning. Yet the Georgia General Assembly — thanks to some duplicity by one of their own, state Sen. John Wiles (R-Marietta) — made it even easier last session for anonymous campaign groups to lie, cheat and steal their way through campaigns.

While few of his colleagues were paying attention, Wiles managed to change part of the Georgia election code so that independent groups can send out mass mailings without having to disclose their roles. The practice is specifically banned in federal elections. Wiles pushed the amendment permitting it in Georgia past the Senate (50-1) and the House (143-1) on the final day of the session.

The rewritten code opens the door for all sorts of shenanigans in the name of free speech, which Wiles piously claims was his foremost concern. He compares anonymous campaign mailings to the Federalist Papers.

If he doesn't know any better than that, Wiles should retake high school history. The Federalist Papers were an ideological debate, published in a very public forum by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, among others, under the pseudonym Publius. The central subject — the power of centralized government versus the states — underpins an important philosophical discussion that continues even today.

What Wiles wants to protect from scrutiny is calculated political mischief using half-truths and outright lies slandering a candidate. Who wants more of that?

Two years ago, a largely unknown group mounted a $1.6 million campaign to remove a sitting Georgia Supreme Court justice from the bench because they didn't think she was supportive enough of the business community in the state. To say that they exaggerated in describing her jurisprudence is to be kind. Because she was a sitting judge, she was constrained in the ways in which she could respond. In the election cycle before that, some of the same donors had tried unsuccessfully to oust the chief justice of the court.

Such skirmishes over judicial elections are happening around the country. They are fueled by individuals and groups who don't want to be limited by campaign finance laws that govern the amounts that can be given to candidates.

But at least voters had a name attached to the group — the Safety and Prosperity Coalition. But thanks to Wiles, groups like that can now send out mass mailings about the candidates they dislike without having to disclose who they are and who they support.

Legalities aside, such tactics encourage cowardice. If opposition groups want to challenge a candidate's record, they can easily do so. But they should be required to put their names where their money is and let voters decide for themselves the veracity of their claims.

And the next time Wiles wants to change Georgia's election code, he ought to have the courage to stand up and tell his colleagues what he really has in mind.

— Mike King, for the editorial board