FEC ActivityThe Federal Election Commission (FEC) is the government agency charged with enforcing the nation's federal election laws. In addition to crafting rules to implement election laws, the Commission investigates and punishes violations of the laws.
The Legal Center participates in regulatory proceedings and other matters before the FEC. The FEC Reaches a New Low For years the CLC has been critical of the FEC’s weak enforcement of federal campaign finance laws against law-breaking 527 groups. The FEC’s weak enforcement has now devolved into non-enforcement. In the words of FEC Commissioners Cynthia L. Bauerly and Ellen L. Weintraub published in a December 19 statement, their three Republican “colleagues’ refusal to accept the signed conciliation agreement with the November Fund amounts to a refusal to enforce the law.” Bundling Disclosure Provisions Undermined by New FEC Rules? After much discussion of the difficulty of crafting a compromise and a bit of self-congratulation, the FEC today unanimously adopted rules to implement the bundling disclosure requirements in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007—the important ethics and lobbying reform law passed by Congress in 2007. Unfortunately, the rules adopted by the FEC today may seriously undermine the purposes of the law and the intent of the law’s principal sponsors—including President-elect Obama and Sen. Feingold—as expressed on the floor of the Senate. Bopp Buzzer Beater Rejected The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina Wednesday denied election lawyer Jim Bopp's latest attempt to halt the enforcement of federal campaign finance laws at the height of the presidential campaign in Koerber v. FEC. Campaign & Election Law Litigation Update, August 2008 It remains a busy time in campaign finance and election law, with a growing number of cases on court dockets around the country, particularly those challenging existing campaign finance laws. With many new developments, we have updated our “Cases of Interest,” providing a brief summary of pertinent cases and the Campaign Legal Center’s involvement. Plenty of reasons for congressional ethics office to take shape Now that the Office of Congressional Ethics panel has been named, it remains an open question whether it will turn out to be an effective, independent, third-party agency that takes its responsibility to investigate alleged ethics violations seriously. But there are some reasons for hope. Newly-Reconstituted FEC Passes First Test The newly-reconstituted FEC passed its first test today when it rejected a request by Club for Growth PAC for an exemption from the clear statutory “stand-by-your-ad” spoken disclaimer requirement for the PAC’s ten- and 15-second independent expenditure television ads. Let’s Scratch Out the FEC Enforcement of the campaign finance laws is vital in a presidential election year, but the Federal Election Commission is still not up to the job. Its failure has been so persistent over so many years that Congress is now weighing a bipartisan bill that would replace the FEC altogether. 527s in 2008: The Past, Present, and Future of 527 Organization Political Activity Regulation In 2004 and 2006, so-called "527 organizations" violated federal law by raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence federal elections without abiding by federal campaign finance laws. As the 2008 presidential election campaigns kick into high gear, the Harvard Journal on Legislation has published an article I wrote entitled 527s in 2008: The Past, Present, and Future of 527 Organization Political Activity Regulation. CLC Urges New FEC to Quickly Implement HLOGA Bundling and Travel Provisions Today, the Campaign Legal Center in a letter to the Federal Election Commission urged the new members of the Commission to quickly complete pending and overdue rulemakings related to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA) lobbyist bundling and candidate travel provisions. Judge Gives SpeechNow Test Case Failing Grade Yesterday's SpeechNow.org decision reaffirms what the Supreme Court has made clear for decades: that laws designed to prevent the circumvention of contribution limits serve important governmental interests by protecting the integrity of campaign finance laws. |
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