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FEC

The FEC Is A Failed Agency

It’s official, the FEC is a failed government agency. That view, long held by observers of American elections, has now been openly confirmed by the leader of the agency itself. FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel told the New York Times that the FEC is unable to substantively enforce election laws which means the agency is effectively worthless. This situation is mostly be design, the FEC is split 3-3 between Republicans and Democrats and neither side has an interest in regulating money in politics generally, nor their particular constituencies especially. Throw in new court rulings such as Citizens United and it becomes less clear what the laws the FEC is charged with enforcing even mean. That dynamic ensures regulatory failure, something the current FEC chairwoman appears to know all too well.

Mudslinging At The FEC Over Disclosure

Federal Election Commission Chairman Lee Goodman and two of his fellow Republican colleagues skewered Vice Chairwoman Ann Ravel — a Democrat — on Thursday because she didn’t vote to defend the agency last month against litigation from campaign finance reform-minded organizations. “Not only does this effort derail longstanding Commission practice, but more troublingly, it contravenes well-established legal precedents and evinces a flippant disregard for judicial review,” wrote Goodman, along with FEC commissioners Caroline Hunter and Matthew Petersen. "Commissioner Ravel has gone to extraordinary and unprecedented lengths to try to censor presentation of the agency’s rationale for its prosecutorial decision in the Crossroads GPS matter," they continued. The blistering four-page statement came less than four months after Goodman and Ravel vowed to work together to improve the nation’s campaign finance watchdog and to overcome the bitter ideological divide that has for years plagued the agency. Whether abstaining from the vote draws “furor or not, I’m here to do what’s best for the public and to fulfill the purposes of the FEC,” Ravel told the Center for Public Integrity. “It’s about disclosure.”

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