Member-only story
The FEC Is Disintegrating. Our Democracy Is at Stake.
President Trump’s unwillingness to to keep the agency staffed is indicative of his administration’s disdain for election laws
I resigned from the Federal Election Commission in March 2017. President Trump left my seat, meant to be filled by a Democrat, vacant.
The same thing happened after a Republican member resigned in 2018. No one replaced him.
Now a third member has stepped down: After 11 years on the commission, Vice Chair Matt Petersen suddenly resigned in late August. With his departure, the FEC, responsible for enforcing the nation’s campaign finance laws, lost its required quorum of four members. (The commission is actually supposed to have six members, with no more than three of one political party, but it has been without a full complement of commissioners for more than two years.)
Petersen’s departure means that, as of this month, the FEC will be unable to hold a meeting, much less cast a vote. There will be no hearings, no new rules, no advisory opinions, no audits, and no new investigations — all just a few years after a Russia scandal that rocked our presidential election. And all as the 2020 presidential campaign heats up.
Without additional members, the FEC will no longer be able to accomplish its most basic functions — and the future integrity of our electoral process is in peril because of that.
The FEC was designed to administer all campaign finance laws by issuing regulations, initiating investigations, enforcing the law, and imposing fines. It also litigates challenges to campaign finance laws and provides advisory opinions to clarify the applicability of the law to particular facts. It is essentially a consumer protection agency, created to protect the public’s right to a free and fair electoral process.
Politics can now easily return to the days of Watergate.
Of course, it didn’t always succeed in that mission. Between 2013 and 2017, I was chair, vice chair, and commissioner of the FEC, at a time when there was a full complement of commissioners. Due to partisan gridlock, the FEC failed to require disclosure in…
