Enforcement
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The statute increases penalties for certain violations, and also creates a framework for more active criminal enforcement of the law. Criminal sentencing standards for campaign finance violations have been established, and the statute of limitations for criminal liability has been extended to 5 years. The FEC and the Department of Justice have begun developing a new protocol or agreement governing their shared responsibility for enforcement of the law.

The McCain Matching Fund Case: Part Two

   The Commission on the 21st, this Thursday, has set itself the task of deciding whether John McCain can withdraw from the primary matching fund program.  Its counsel has concluded that this withdrawal must be voted, four votes being required to let McCain off. Assume that the Commission cannot muster those four votes: what would be this mean?  Considering this question gives reason to wonder about the wisdom of the presentation and scheduling of this issue as it now sits on the agenda.

A New Agency and Its Policy Choices

    Meeting for the first time, the Federal Election Commission elected its officers and looked at the challenge ahead.  According to the FEC press release, Chairman McGahn noted the matters of "policy" it would need to address. This is a correctly stated duty of the agency: but it is also the source of the ongoing conflict between the agency and its well-organized, litigious critics  who draw a line between the "law" the FEC must follow and "policy" judgments Congress has already made and that the agency is not free to vary.

FEC Commissioners and Their "One Term"

    Jan Baran, who knows his Federal Election Commission, offered this observation to the National Journal on the agencies'  nomination and confirmation difficulties.   

There’s got to be a happy medium between commissioners who serve for decades and commissioners who serve for a very short time. And perhaps it would be prudent to allow for at least one reappointment.

    This is an understatement.  Nothing is sillier than the position at which we have arrived with FEC Commissioners: limited to one term, they serve, still, for years on end because the Congress does not get around to, or cannot agree on, timely new appointments.

 

Judging Campaign Finance Enforcement: Setting Expectations and Worrying More About the Right of Association

     Below is the text of a presentation to be delivered today for an American Constititution Society panel in Philadelphia, on the topic of "Can Campaign Finance Reform Actually Work?".

 

New Year's Eve

   Brad Smith commends the outgoing FEC Commissioners, whose work will go sadly unrecognized. Of course, very little is known about the agency, much less appreciated.  We are told oh-so-often that we must have stringent controls on campaign finance in the interest of the Republic, for its vital defense.  Those controls, now that we have them, defy casual understanding and so are largely ignored, and the agency that administers and produces a fair share of them is not closely followed or well understood. If anyone hears of the FEC, it is usually by way of a hardshly critical word, uttered by organizations and editorial boards sworn for their own purposes to prove a point about the inadequacy of the law and it enforcement. 

Also...

Holiday Tip  12/27/07

A Season of Reform Priorities  12/21/07

No Barking in the Night about the FEC  12/20/07

"Clean and Fair"  12/18/07

Christmas Past, Present and Future at the Federal Election Commission  12/17/07

"Needing"The FEC--And Why....  12/7/07

The FEC On its Sick (Death?) Bed  12/4/07

The Daily Kos, the Daily Paper, the Nightly News, the U.S. Government  7/27/07

More on Family Matters  7/25/07

Election-Year Interventions and DOJ’s Unwritten Exceptions  5/10/07