Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Time for a totally new FEC, campaign finance lawyers urge Trump and Congress

Federal Election Commission

The FEC has been effectively shuttered since Labor Day for lack of a quorum. Just three of the six seats are filled.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A bipartisan group of campaign finance lawyers is calling on President Trump and congressional leaders to give the Federal Election Commission a totally fresh start before the 2020 election season shifts into high gear.

For the past 128 days, the agency has been effectively sidelined due to a lack of quorum. With only three of the commission's six seats occupied — all by people who have agreed to stay on although their terms expired years ago — the FEC has not been able to carry out any of its responsibilities for enforcing the laws regulating money in presidential and congressional elections.

The lawyers sent a letter on Monday urging the White House, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to negotiate a deal for a totally new roster of six commissioners.


The current de facto shutdown is "untenable" and having a fully functioning FEC is "critical to maintain public confidence in our national election systems," read the letter, signed by 16 different firms that represent clients across the political spectrum. "We are united in our commitment to the rule of law and the need for the agency tasked with regulating federal campaign finance laws to fully function and carry out the mission assigned to it by Congress."

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Until Trump appoints and the Senate confirms at least one more commissioner, the FEC will remain in the state of limbo that started when a third commissioner stepped down at the end of August. It may not hold public meetings, open new investigations, identify campaign finance violations, conduct audits of presidential candidates' fundraising and spending, or issue new advisory opinions, among other things.

The commission also can't do anything to address its growing backlog of enforcement matters. More than 300 items are pending.

Trump two years ago nominated Texas attorney Trey Trainor, a Republican, but the Senate has not so much as held a hearing on him. And, since all three remaining commissioners are serving past the expiration of their terms, which the law allows, some in the GOP say the time is ripe for Trump to put forward an entire slate of six. By law no more than three may be from his party.

Democrats say that, as an interim step, they would be content to seat one new commissioner from each side so that enforcement could get started along with the real ramp-up in 2020 presidential and congressional campaign fundraising activities.

Read More

One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

A roll of "voted" stickers.

Pexels, Element5 Digital

One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

The analysis and parsing of learned lessons from the 2024 elections will continue for a long time. What did the campaigns do right and wrong? What policies will emerge from the new arrangements of power? What do the parties need to do for the future?

An equally important question is what lessons are there for our democratic structures and processes. One positive lesson is that voting itself was almost universally smooth and effective; we should applaud the election officials who made that happen. But, many elements of the 2024 elections are deeply challenging, from the increasingly outsized role of billionaires in the process to the onslaught of misinformation and disinformation.

Keep ReadingShow less
MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers

A check mark and hands.

Photo by Allison Saeng on Unsplash. Unsplash+ License obtained by the author.

MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers

Originally published by Independent Voter News.

Today, I am proud to share an exciting milestone in my journey as an advocate for democracy and electoral reform.

Keep ReadingShow less
Half-Baked Alaska

A photo of multiple checked boxes.

Getty Images / Thanakorn Lappattaranan

Half-Baked Alaska

This past year’s elections saw a number of state ballot initiatives of great national interest, which proposed the adoption of two “unusual” election systems for state and federal offices. Pairing open nonpartisan primaries with a general election using ranked choice voting, these reforms were rejected by the citizens of Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada. The citizens of Alaska, however, who were the first to adopt this dual system in 2020, narrowly confirmed their choice after an attempt to repeal it in November.

Ranked choice voting, used in Alaska’s general elections, allows voters to rank their candidate choices on their ballot and then has multiple rounds of voting until one candidate emerges with a majority of the final vote and is declared the winner. This more representative result is guaranteed because in each round the weakest candidate is dropped, and the votes of that candidate’s supporters automatically transfer to their next highest choice. Alaska thereby became the second state after Maine to use ranked choice voting for its state and federal elections, and both have had great success in their use.

Keep ReadingShow less
Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

The United States Supreme Court.

Getty Images / Rudy Sulgan

Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

Fourteen years ago, after the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the popular blanket primary system, Californians voted to replace the deeply unpopular closed primary that replaced it with a top-two system. Since then, Democratic Party insiders, Republican Party insiders, minor political parties, and many national reform and good government groups, have tried (and failed) to deep-six the system because the public overwhelmingly supports it (over 60% every year it’s polled).

Now, three minor political parties, who opposed the reform from the start and have unsuccessfully sued previously, are once again trying to overturn it. The Peace and Freedom Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party have teamed up to file a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Their brief repeats the same argument that the courts have previously rejected—that the top-two system discriminates against parties and deprives voters of choice by not guaranteeing every party a place on the November ballot.

Keep ReadingShow less