The Federal Election Commission (FEC) isn’t living up to its responsibilities to the American people. According to an op-ed from the Center for Responsive Politics’ Robert Biersack published today in The New York Times, the FEC no longer does an “adequate job on disclosure” of campaign financial data. He’s right, and the scary thing is that this has the potential to turn into quite a major problem.
It’s ostensibly a simple concept: candidates, campaign committees, and the various other entities that collect and spend money during an election cycle are required to submit cash flow reports to the FEC, and the FEC in turn is required to disclose all that data in a timely manner so that the public is aware of who is financing American elections. But when the Center for Responsive Politics went to go check out the most recent set of disclosures, they weren’t all there. The FEC has promised that they would complete around 95 percent of processing within 30 days of receiving the data, but when asked why this didn’t happen, the FEC essentially just said that it’s running late. Nothing more. And even more concerning, the organization didn’t seem at all worried about this fact, explaining to the Center for Responsive Politics that, “In the current two-year election cycle, the Agency has taken more than 30 days to process 18.8 percent of the new reports filed as of June 20, as compared to 11.4 percent for the same period in the 2011-2012 cycle.” The FEC also referred to the lack of processed data as a “brief” delay. As of press time the FEC has yet to respond to Law Street’s request for comment.
In some ways the reaction from the Center for Responsive Politics and others may seem like making mountains out of molehills. Maybe you think it’s not that big of a deal, or they’ll have the data when they have it, or that government agencies are often unable to meet self-appointed deadlines. It’s easy to think that way, but it’s dead wrong. This is a big deal, one that we all should worry us all.
Although I recognize I’m about to plummet off a huge cliff of political clichés, it’s fair to quote the Gettysburg Address here. We’ve all heard it. We have a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” That principle has held — we elect our officials to represent us, and we expect them to be held accountable to those citizens who voted for them. Recent Supreme Court rulings have made that principle a little more fuzzy — between the Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions, the way in which politicians are influenced has changed. Super PACs dominate political real estate, and as we saw in the 2012 Presidential election, they have the ability to throw plenty of weight around. I’d put my money — disclosed to whoever would like it, of course — on the fact that in the 2014 and 2016 elections we’ll see even more incredible financial influence. And because of these rulings, we don’t necessarily know where that financial influence will come from — only certain types of donations require that the donor’s name is disclosed to the FEC.
That’s why it is so essential that the FEC does its job. There’s already an uphill battle here for Lincoln’s words, and the FEC not disclosing the data for the 2014 election in a timely manner makes it that much less likely that our elected officials are held accountable to those people who elected them. With the amount of money flowing in and out of campaign coffers, any chance we have to know more about that money is essential. The FEC is a government entity, so it needs to hold true to those principles, too: of, for, and by the people. That means that it provides a resource for the people, that’s its job, and the fact that the FEC can’t complete that job in a timely manner is a huge problem.
This isn’t meant to be an alarmist rant about the state of our elections; that’s not useful. Instead I hope that this piece, as well as the Center for Responsive Politics’ op-ed, serves as a kind of call to action. The FEC needs to pull it together, and without public pressure that’s just not going to happen. Part of democracy is that we all hold each other accountable — here’s the opportunity to do that before this gets out of hand.
Judith Ingram, Press Officer at the Federal Election Commission responded to Law Street’s request for comment, and the organization does acknowledge that the backlog is a problem:
“The Commission acknowledges that there were delays in the processing of itemized data in the current election cycle, and the Commission has eliminated the backlog. At this time, the agency’s coding of data is over 99% complete. Moreover, the agency has introduced new procedures to prevent such delays in the future. Our goal for the current reporting period is to process 95 percent of electronically filed reports within 30 days of the July 15 reporting deadline.”
Whether or not these new procedures will help will has yet to be seen.
The problems at the FEC aren’t just an isolated incident or a singular example of the ways in which our democracy is struggling. In fact, they’re representative of a bigger problem. The FEC is supposed to have six commissioners — three Republicans and three Democrats. Each term is supposed to be six years, but if a term expires without some sort of appointment, that seat stays with that commissioner who gets to sit until the Senate approves a new commissioner, or he or she retires or dies.
Currently, only two of the FEC’s six commissioners are serving on active terms — Chair Lee E. Goodman and Vice Chair Ann Ravel. They were both appointed by President Obama last year, after the FEC actually reached the point where all its commissioners were serving on expired terms. It was a struggle to even fill those two seats — the nominee prior to Goodman and Ravel got shot down, and Obama didn’t try to nominate anyone else.
Let’s be clear, the very people whose election races the FEC is supposed to monitor have a hard time filling spots at the FEC. Now the FEC is struggling. I’m not going to blame the backlog in reporting solely on the commissioners serving expired terms, but it’s clear that something isn’t working here, and new blood can sometimes be a very good thing. The FEC will be making changes, and that’s good, but maybe a review of the whole system is needed to prevent this kind of problem in the future.
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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.
Featured image courtesy of [Beverly & Pack via Flickr]