This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Elections: The Dysfunctional FEC

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/this-is-why-we-cant-have-nice-elections-the-dysfunctional-fec/277639/


Stephen Colbert, shown testifying before the FEC, did his best to make a mockery of the body. (Reuters)

A long time ago -- back when the Arab oil embargo was a recent memory, Ringo Starr was still a revered musician, and leisure suits had yet to reach their zenith -- Congress decided the nation needed a watchdog for elections. The creation of the Federal Election Commission was one of the many reforms that followed Watergate. And like many of those reforms (as well as leisure suits and Ringo's reputation), the FEC is a shadow of its former self these days.

The Boston Globe's Christopher Rowland did a great deep dive into the FEC's dysfunction on Monday. He opens with this anecdote:

'The free charter flight for Mitt Romney campaign volunteers seemed like an open-and-shut case for the six members of the Federal Election Commission.

A wealthy friend of Romney spent $150,000 to fly as many as 200 campaign volunteers from Utah to a fund-raising phone-a-thon in Boston.

The three Democrats on the FEC agreed with the agency's staff that the charter appeared to violate rules limiting such "in-kind'' gifts to $2,600 per election.

But the three Republican commissioners disagreed, saying Romney's friend merely acted "in behalf of'' Romney's 2008 campaign -- not the illegal "on behalf of" -- and thus the flight was allowed.

With that twist of legal semantics, the case died -- effectively dismissed.'