The Independent View: The Restoring Integrity to America’s Election Act

This post comes from the staff of The Campaign Legal Center (CLC).

Founded in 2002, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that defends and protects our democracy in the areas of campaign finance, voting rights, political communication and government ethics. CLC works every day to attack laws and regulations that undermine the fundamental rights of all Americans to participate in the political process and to defend laws that protect these interests. Working in administrative, legislative and legal proceedings, CLC shapes our nation’s laws and policies so that the right to have a voice in our free and democratic society remains the foundation of our political system.

I recently was at a discussion group where Federal Election Commission (FEC) Chair Ann M. Ravel describes her agency as “worse than dysfunctional” and says “the likelihood of federal campaign finance laws being enforced in the 2016 election is slim.”

On June 25, 2015, Representatives Derek Kilmer (D-WA), Jim Renacci (R-OH), John Carney (D-DE) and Lou Barletta (R-PA) introduced H.R. 2931, “Restoring Integrity to America’s Elections Act,” a bill that seeks to restructure the FEC.

Finding bipartisan agreement in the notion that American taxpayers deserve better, the four Representatives put together a proposal that focuses on making the FEC actually work and perform its statutory functions. The agency’s hallmarks are partisan and ideological division and an on-going inability to interpret and enforce the federal campaign finance laws. In sum, the agency is failing to do much of its job.

The FEC’s abject failure comes at a time when Super PACs and so-called “dark money” groups are drastically changing the face of political campaigns, especially at the federal level. The skyrocketing amount of outside spending already occurring in the run up to the 2016 elections is a phenomenon created by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC and subsequent court decisions. These decisions freed corporations and labor unions to make unlimited independent expenditures using their treasury funds, and so-called Super PACs to raise unlimited contributions to pay for such expenditures.

Part of the courts’ rationale for allowing this kind of spending was the assumption that the expenditures would, in fact, be independent of candidates and parties. This has not proven to be the case. The candidates’ close associates run super PACs, candidates attend fundraisers for their Super PAC, and campaign committees are delegating tasks they traditionally performed to the Super PACs. These arrangements appear to be coordinated by any common sense understanding of the word. And yet, in the last five years the FEC has dismissed at least 29 complaints alleging illegal coordination without so much as investigating the claims. With a dysfunctional FEC, it is clear to candidates and their Super PACs that they can blatantly violate the law without fear of enforcement. Candidates and outside groups have become increasingly bold in their violation of the law.

As the 2016 election cycle has already demonstrated, candidates and campaigns will always push the boundaries of the law when it comes to raising and spending money to get elected. The American people deserve a steadfast watchdog, not toothless tiger, to ensure the laws are respected and enforced. It is now time to fix what has proven to be exactly what Chairman Hays had hoped for in 1974, a weak, ineffective agency characterized by partisan dysfunction.

The ‘‘Restoring Integrity to America’s Elections Act’’ provides a new starting point and should help initiate a new discussion about common ground for parties who believe federal agencies should not simply exist, but actually function. It does not serve the American taxpayer to have a “worse than dysfunctional” agency purposefully designed to serve the “regulated community,” i.e., politicians, especially incumbents. This bipartisan effort of Representatives Kilmer, Renacci, Carney and Barletta provides a useful opportunity to restart the conversation on fixing the FEC.