The FEC

2000-2023 | 23 years

In this episode, President Bartlet’s staff is trying to make progress on a variety of issues. One thing the administration is planning to do is nominate two people who want campaign finance reform to the FEC.

The FEC, or Federal Election Commission, is an independent government agency created by Congress in 1974 to administer and enforce the Federal Election Campaign Act, which limits the sources and amounts of contributions used to finance federal elections and requires public disclosure of the funds raised and spent. Their current focus is on fairly enforcing and administering federal campaign finance laws and providing transparency through the disclosing of funds raised and spent to influence federal elections.

The FEC is supposed to inform Americans about spending in federal elections and oversee the integrity of federal election campaigns. This is supposed to give Americans faith in the democratic process and encourage them to be more active in government.

The FEC is led by six commissioners, nominated by the President and then confirmed by the Senate. The commissioners serve in six-year terms, with two seats opened every two years. No more than three commissioners can represent the same party, and at least four votes are required for the commission to take action, meaning that the commissioners have to work across party lines to get anything done.

While meant to make sure that the commission is acting in a non-partisan fashion, this has instead made the FEC largely ineffective. Rather than encouraging working together across party lines, this system has encouraged a game of one party holding out against the other, blocking them from making progress. It was also made harder for the FEC to enforce campaign finance laws after the Citizens United V. FEC case, which essentially ruled that money is a form of speech, and therefore protected by the Constitution. Given that the FEC is the primary agency to enforce campaign finance laws, its inaction has led to a lack of disclosure of both secret spending and the true sources of election spending along with an increase in illegal coordination between candidates and super PACs.

However, the FEC has been making some progress recently, specifically in the realm of technology. This month the FEC has started the process of protecting Americans from misinformation in the 2024 election by looking into regulating AI-generated deepfakes in political ads. The commission voted unanimously to advance a petition to regulate ads that use artificial intelligence to portray a candidate as saying or doing something that they didn’t.

So while like a lot of American governments at the moment, political differences are making it harder for reform, the FEC has proved that they can come together in the interests of keeping the American people well informed.