[Vision2020] Seattle Times 9-2-19 "Elections in peril with decimated Federal Election Commission"

[Ted Moffett]

Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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Elections in peril with decimated Federal Election Commission
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/elections-in-peril-with-decimated-fec/

Sep. 2, 2019 at 12:01 pm Updated Sep. 3, 2019

The fall 2020 election promises to be the most expensive, and possibly the
most intensely fought, in American history. Without immediate federal
reform, campaigns will be free to run amok. The agency in charge of
oversight has gone comatose.

For the well-being of American democracy, Congress and President Donald
Trump must immediately repair the Federal Election Commission.

The FEC, plagued by years of deadlock, lacks enough commissioners to open
investigations or hand out penalties. This is rock bottom of a long decline.

In the Watergate era, righteous public anger demanded political
accountability and transparency. Congress created the FEC to watch for
illegal campaigning and mete out penalties. Today, amid election hacking,
wanton disinformation, foreign interference and undisclosed campaign
funding, our government leaders are failing to protect American democracy.

Its story reads as a playbook for how to doom an agency’s usefulness.

The FEC’s structure proved inadequate for modern politics. The commission
is supposed to have six appointed members — no more than three from any
party — and a four-vote minimum to approve action, to ensure bipartisan
fairness. But as America’s partisan divide has deepened, the FEC tended
toward party-line deadlock. A report this spring from the Brennan Center
for Justice
<https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/publications/2019_04_FECV_Final.pdf>
written
by a former FEC counsel found FEC commissioners deadlocked on 37.5% of
decisions in 2016, compared to 4.2% of votes in 2006.

A one-term limit for commissioners imposed in 1997 worsened the situation.
Instead of continually refreshing the commission, this gave politicians
power over the agency. Congress and Presidents Trump and Barack Obama each
abandoned their responsibility to install new commissioners. Under FEC
rules, this enabled the incumbents to remain commissioners after their
single term’s end date.

An August resignation reduced the FEC to just three commissioners, all past
due to leave. This is not enough to do business. The watchdog is too
starved to bark.

The Brennan Center report proposed a series of structural and technical
changes to get the FEC working. They include reducing the commission to
five members, with one required to be a political independent — such as a
former judge or FEC staffer — and reforms to the replacement and
enforcement mechanisms.

Most were incorporated in the sweeping political-reform bill H.R. 1
<https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/how-your-u-s-lawmaker-voted-50/>
that
the Democratic House passed. It has little hope of passing the Republican
Senate.

To give the FEC a better shot at revival, structural agency reforms must be
proposed in a separate bill both parties can work on.

“This shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” said Daniel I. Weiner, the author of
the Brennan Center report. “When you work in politics you want to know what
the rules are. Democrats, Republicans, it doesn’t matter. When you’ve got
an agency riven by discord, they don’t provide guidance.”

Gig Harbor Democratic Rep. Derek Kilmer has taken a lead role on FEC
reconstruction and said he sees significant bipartisan support.

While the legislation develops, the Senate must follow through immediately
on statements it will work with President Trump to seat a full slate of
commissioners
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gop-appointee-resigns-from-federal-election-commission-leaving-it-without-a-quorum/2019/08/26/d05b9cb6-c822-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html>.
American elections need oversight like no other time in our history.

The Seattle Times editorial board members are editorial page editor Kate
Riley, Frank A. Blethen, Brier Dudley, Jennifer Hemmingsen, Mark Higgins,
Derrick Nunnally and William K. Blethen (emeritus).
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