Friday, November 4, 2011

The Federal Election (Out Of) Commission

If you're wondering why all the Obama administration's efforts to combat Republican voter ID disenfranchisement laws are going through Eric Holder and the DoJ, it's because the Federal Election Commission has all but been eliminated by the GOP.

Public Citizen noted that partisan deadlock since 2008 had prevented the six member agency from enforcing the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) and performing other essential duties.

“The FEC is broken,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist with Public Citizen. “The Republican bloc of commissioners – selected for the FEC by Sen. Mitch McConnell to stymie enforcement of our campaign finance laws – have done precisely that. Partisan deadlock is paralyzing the agency. President Obama needs to step in and appoint new commissioners who will take their charge of enforcing the law seriously and responsibly.”

From 2003 to 2007, there were a total of 39 split votes on enforcement actions, according to a report (PDF) by the group.

But from 2008 to 2010, the number of split votes jumped up to 70, even though the total number of votes was drastically less. The deadlocked votes led to dismissed complaints.

Historically, the agency deadlocked on fewer than 2 percent of its enforcement actions.

The FEC is also pursuing far fewer audits of the financial activity of candidates and committees than it had done so previously. The number of audits dropped from 242 between 2004 to 2007 to just 84 between 2008 to 2010.

Five of the commissioners terms have expired, but they continue to serve on the commission.

And they will never be replaced because any efforts to do so will be filibustered by the GOP.   The most effective weapon the GOP has remains the ability to assure that the federal government is completely dysfunctional, and the Village's assurance that both sides will be blamed for the government's failure to operate at even a basic level.

Feature, not a bug.  Forever and ever, amen.  Just give into the GOP's demands and expunge Democrats from our political system and all the pain will magically go away...

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