Alexandria, VA – The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP), America’s largest nonprofit dedicated to defending political free speech and assembly, released a new issue brief today addressing allegations that the Federal Election Commission is “dysfunctional” and does not work as intended.
Among the points made in the brief:
- The FEC’s structure is intentionally bipartisan due to concerns about how President Nixon used the government against political enemies.
- FEC Commissioners often agree on decisions – reaching a bipartisan consensus on 93% of all votes and 86% of substantive votes in 2014, according to its own data.
- The Commission does, in fact, routinely enforce campaign finance laws. The media and the public continue to rely on the regular filing of reports by candidates, parties, and political committees with the Commission, and these groups abide by contribution limits and disclosure requirements.
“Proposals to put the FEC under the control of the White House ignore history and would destroy the agency’s legitimacy,” said CCP President David Keating. “Some FEC Commissioners and advocates of further speech regulation simply want the FEC to go beyond its stated purpose and recklessly intrude on political free speech rights, so they’ve decided to attack the Commission’s integrity as a way to pressure Congress to make changes to the agency’s bipartisan structure. But good faith differences of opinion about how to interpret complicated aspects of campaign finance law does not dysfunction make.”
To view the study, “Delusions about ‘Dysfunction’: Understanding the Federal Election Commission,” by CCP Research Fellow Scott Blackburn click here.
