The Federal Election Commissioners' terms are up. But there's no one to replace them.
Federal Election Commissioner Caroline Hunters term ended on April 30. So as of now, all the members of the agency that enforces the nation's campaign laws and is supposed to oversee the flood of money candidates and their allies spend, are working on borrowed time. President Obama has not nominated anyone to succeed them. So the current commissioners are in their expired seats.
The agency's commission structure is three Democrats and three Republicans. The president names the Democrats and the Senate leader of the opposite party names the Republicans, who are confirmed by the Senate. They serve a single six year term, which means it is often deadlocked along party lines. The FEC's inability to do its job has emboldened some groups to test legal boundaries, such as the Citizen United v. FEC case. The three Democrats wanted to consider tightening disclosure requirements and the Republicans insisted on reviewing only those rules that conflicted with the Supreme Court's ruling. So nothing happened and in 2012 over $1 billion was spent by independent groups.
In more than four years in office, President Obama has made just one FEC nomination, labor lawyer John Sullivan, only to withdraw his name after Senate opposition. So one by one, commissioners timed out but stayed in their jobs. FEC rules say anyone who earns $155,500 a year can stay in their seats until the Senate confirms their replacements. This decreased the urgency of finding new commissioners while increasing the ineffectiveness of the agency.
Today, the FEC does not have its full complement of six commissioners. Democrat Cynthia Bauerly, who stayed on after her term expired in 2012, resigned on February 1. That would appear to leave the Republicans with a 3-2 advantage. But the law requires four votes to take action.
The percentage of split votes has risen from 1 percent in 2007 to 18.5 percent in 2012. So why should you pay all that money to campaign finance lawyers to make sure you are doing the right thing when there is no penalty if you are not?
To resolve this problem we need the rules changed so the commissioners are independent and professionals, not appointees.
What do you think the Commission structure should be?
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!
Michael H. Drucker
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