<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="gmail-article-title gmail-p-name entry-title" style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 13.5px;font-feature-settings:"liga";color:rgb(35,31,32);line-height:46px;letter-spacing:-1px;font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro"><span style="font-size:small;font-weight:normal">Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</span><br></h1><div><span style="font-weight:normal"><font size="2">-----------------------------</font></span></div><h1 class="gmail-article-title gmail-p-name entry-title" style="box-sizing:inherit;font-size:42px;margin:0px 0px 13.5px;font-feature-settings:"liga";color:rgb(35,31,32);line-height:46px;letter-spacing:-1px;font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro">Elections in peril with decimated Federal Election Commission</h1><div class="gmail-article-dateline" style="box-sizing:inherit;color:rgb(112,117,124);font-family:ff-dagny-web-pro;font-size:15px;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:27px"><a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/elections-in-peril-with-decimated-fec/">https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/elections-in-peril-with-decimated-fec/</a>  <br></div><div class="gmail-article-dateline" style="box-sizing:inherit;color:rgb(112,117,124);font-family:ff-dagny-web-pro;font-size:15px;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:27px">Sep. 2, 2019 at 12:01 pm Updated Sep. 3, 2019</div><div class="gmail-article-dateline" style="box-sizing:inherit;color:rgb(112,117,124);font-family:ff-dagny-web-pro;font-size:15px;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:27px"><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">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.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">For the well-being of American democracy, Congress and President Donald Trump must immediately repair the Federal Election Commission.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">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.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">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.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">Its story reads as a playbook for how to doom an agency’s usefulness.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">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 href="https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/publications/2019_04_FECV_Final.pdf" target="_blank" class="gmail-content-link external" style="box-sizing:inherit;background:0px 0px;color:rgb(7,119,179);text-decoration-line:none;outline:0px"><span style="box-sizing:inherit">A report this spring from the Brennan Center for Justice</span></a><span style="box-sizing:inherit"> 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.</span></p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">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.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">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.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">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.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">Most were incorporated in <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/how-your-u-s-lawmaker-voted-50/" class="gmail-content-link" style="box-sizing:inherit;background:0px 0px;color:rgb(7,119,179);text-decoration-line:none;outline:0px">the sweeping political-reform bill H.R. 1</a> that the Democratic House passed. It has little hope of passing the Republican Senate.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">To give the FEC a better shot at revival, structural agency reforms must be proposed in a separate bill both parties can work on.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal"><span style="box-sizing:inherit"></span></p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">“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.”</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">Gig Harbor Democratic Rep. Derek Kilmer has taken a lead role on FEC reconstruction and said he sees significant bipartisan support.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal">While the legislation develops, the Senate must follow through immediately on <a href="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" target="_blank" rel="noopener" class="gmail-content-link external" style="box-sizing:inherit;background:0px 0px;color:rgb(43,77,112);text-decoration-line:none;outline:0px">statements it will work with President Trump to seat a full slate of commissioners</a>. American elections need oversight like no other time in our history.</p><p style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 31.2813px 13.5px 166.875px;padding:0px;width:636.234px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px;font-style:normal"><span class="gmail-name" style="font-style:italic;box-sizing:inherit;font-weight:700">The Seattle Times editorial board </span><span style="font-style:italic;box-sizing:inherit">members are editorial page editor Kate Riley, Frank A. Blethen, Brier Dudley, Jennifer Hemmingsen, Mark Higgins, Derrick Nunnally and William K. Blethen (emeritus).</span></p><div class="extended-byline" style="box-sizing:inherit;padding:40px 0px;margin-right:0px;width:636.234px;margin-left:166.875px;float:none;color:rgb(35,31,32);font-family:ff-meta-serif-web-pro;font-size:19px"><div class="gmail-single-byline" style="box-sizing:inherit;margin-bottom:0px"><br></div></div></div></div>