Newsday Editorial: Feckless FEC

The nation needs a new sheriff for federal elections. Without enforcement stronger than the Federal Election Commission is currently structured or inclined to provide, hard-won campaign-finance reform, including the key ban on soft money, will be meaningless.

The nation’s campaign-finance watchdog should be independent of political parties to ensure that it works in the interest of the public. Right now it is more lapdog than watchdog.

Created in 1974 in the wake of Watergate campaign abuses, the commission was seemingly designed to be ineffectual. Its six commissioners – three Democrats and three Republicans – are party partisans nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The even split is dictated by law, which says that no more than three commissioners may be from any one party. But it takes four votes for the FEC to act – a prescription for stalemate.

Commission rulings often come years after an election cycle and penalties have been too lenient to provide much of a deterrent. And with Congress in control of its budget, the FEC is a classic example of an agency that serves the interests of the people it is supposed to regulate.

Now, according to the congressional sponsors of the new campaign-finance law, FEC commissioners who have the job of writing rules to implement the law are engaged in a rear-guard action to gut it instead. The sponsors, chief among them Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), have bitterly accused the FEC of creating loopholes for unregulated soft-money contributions to be funneled to federal campaigns through state parties and sham organizations ostensibly independent of candidates. At best, soft money buys access to public officials. At worst it buys influence – and maybe even votes.

To view the entire editorial, go to: http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpfec082777179jul08.story?coll=ny%2Deditorials%2Dheadlines