The Independent View: This Is What Happens When There Is No Posse

Continuing from my prior post, “it is an open scandal in Washington that the Federal Election Commission is completely ossified as the referee and penalizer of abuses in national politics”, we now will review the New York Board of Election’s lack of enforcing campaign finance violations.

Earlier this month, federal prosecutors arrested Queens Sen. Malcolm Smith, Bronx Assemblyman Eric Stevenson and New York City Councilman Dan Halloran in bribery schemes. Officials including Gov. Andrew Cuomo have since begun discussing new laws in response; Democrats who dominate the Assembly plan to introduce a campaign finance reform.

While laudable, good-government advocates say the New York Board of Elections' action is notable for being so rare, this was only the sixth time in the last 10 years that the board, after undertaking an investigation, has referred a complaint to a local prosecutor. It received more than 1,000 complaints over that time, according to Jerry Goldfeder, an election lawyer.

League of Women Voters Legislative Director Barbara Bartoletti said it is "very difficult" to go after election law violations, for a variety of reasons. The Board of Elections is split evenly along party lines, and given the political basis to many complaints they are rarely pursued. Even if they are, the board does not currently employ any investigators, due to budget reduction, and local prosecutors including Rensselaer County District Attorney Rich McNally have said they don't have many resources to devote to public corruption cases.

"There are so many weaknesses in the chain," Bartoletti said.

One solution favored by her group and others would be to give the Office of Attorney General jurisdiction to investigate and enforce election and campaign finance laws. Cuomo promised to do so in his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, and his successor as attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, has expressed a similar position. Some legislators are cool to the idea, and fear an aggressive attorney general could pursue a partisan agenda if granted.

Cuomo did not include the item, or any expansion of the attorney general's power, in a package of anti-corruption bills he announced last week. They would stiffen penalties for defrauding the public and create several new crimes, enforceable by the state's district attorneys. Cuomo said he would "revisit and explore" his campaign promise about the attorney general. "The Board of Elections has really poor enforcement, in my opinion, and it has for a long time. That has to be improved," the governor said last week in a radio interview. "The attorney general could be helpful there."

In a statement, Schneiderman said: "We should take an 'all of the above' approach to policing public corruption, and my office will use every tool available to restore the people's faith in the integrity of our state government."

New York Board of Elections Democratic Co-chairman Doug Kellner affirmed Goldfeder's count, but spokesman Tom Connolly noted hundreds of complaints for non-filing or over contributions, which did not require investigations, have been sent to prosecutors over the past several years.

So where is the posse?