How the FEC Turned a Blind Eye to Foreign Meddling

How the FEC Turned a Blind Eye to Foreign Meddling
For years, my fellow FEC commissioners refused to apply campaign finance rules to the internet. Now Russia is running amok on Facebook.
By ANN RAVEL September 18, 2017




I warned that Vladimir Putin could meddle in our elections nearly three years ago, as vice chair of the Federal Election Commission, the federal agency charged with not only protecting the integrity of our election process, but ensuring disclosure of the sources of money in politics. Our vulnerabilities seemed obvious: The FEC’s antiquated policies refer to fax machines and teletypes, but barely mention modern technological phenomena like social media, YouTube and bots. The inadequacy of the FEC’s current regulations makes it practically impossible for both regulators and citizens to determine if the funding for a political advertisement online came from a domestic source or an enemy abroad. We had left the window wide open for foreign interference.

I suggested to the commission that the FEC consult with internet and tech experts to discuss how the agency’s current approach may or may not fit with future innovations. Starting this conversation should have been noncontroversial, especially at an agency whose very mission is to inform the public about the sources behind campaign spending.But my comments were greeted with harassment and death threats stoked by claims by the three Republican commissioners that increased transparency in internet political advertising was censorship. Requiring financial disclosure, they argued, “could threaten the continued development of the Internet’s virtual free marketplace of political ideas and democratic debate.” One commissioner went so far as to tell me that even talking about this subject at the commission would itself “chill speech.”

Not only was it taboo to suggest that the FEC adapt to the times, the commission was barely interested in enforcing rules already in place. In one instance, Republican commissioners had blocked enforcement of a law that explicitly prohibits foreign interference in U.S. elections, despite clear evidence that foreign nationals had spent large sums of money to influence a California ballot measure. Next, they blocked attempts to strengthen FEC regulations to protect the integrity of our political process when there is evidence of foreign contributions. This intransigence, in the face of open interference by foreign nationals, might as well have been a giant neon sign announcing to hostile actors worldwide that there would be no consequences for illegally meddling in American elections.
But that was before the 2016 election, before the mounting evidence of Russian disinformation operations designed to disrupt our political process. Surely the FEC has changed its response as new facts have come to light?

Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. When a reporter asked about the Russian Facebook ads, the new vice chair of the FEC defended the refusal to enforce the law or implement new policies. She and her GOP colleagues, she explained, “are concerned about protecting first amendment rights to participate in the political process.” Whose rights are being protected? Those of the American public, or the rights of the Russians to spend money to covertly manipulate public opinion and affect our elections?

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/18/fec-foreign-meddling-russia-facebook-215619