It is no surprise to anyone that money is flooding into federal elections in the post-Citizens United era. The surprise is how little of it is being regulated. The agency tasked with monitoring and regulating all elections is severely limited due to staff cuts and partisan bickering.
The commission over the past year has reached an all-time low in its ability to reach consensus, stalling action on dozens of rulemaking decisions, as well as audit and enforcement matters, some of which are years old.
Additionally, partisan bickering among the appointed commissioners has led to a drop in agency fines for political committees that break election rules. In 2006 the FEC assessed a total of more than $6.7 million in fines. By 2012, however due to the inefficiency of the agency, it collected less than $1 million in fines.
Despite dramatic increases in election spending sped up by key Supreme Court decisions, the agency’s funding has remained flat for five years and staffing levels have fallen to a 15-year low overall.
Analysts who are charged with scouring disclosure reports to ensure candidates and political action committees are complying with laws have a nearly quarter-million-page backlog. One of the aims of the agency was to have all non-presidential committee audits finished 10 months after the election. At 10 months only 27% had been completed.
The agency is also seriously out of date when it comes to online donations, where few regulations have been put into place. The FEC does not require donations under $200 to be reported.
This means that $1.8 million of the donations received by Obama in September of 2012 required no associated names or addresses because they were under the $200 limit. This lack of regulation could easily allow corporations and foreign donors to make donations illegally, threatening the credibility of our election system.
In election after election, record amounts of money continue to be spent on campaigns. Last year topped 6 billion dollars, more than half of which was spent on the presidential campaign.
With more money flowing into politics, issues such as partisan divides and low staffing affecting the FEC one thing is for sure: this is a recipe for disaster.
So why does this matter so much? In 2010 only 9 House challengers who spent under $1 million won their seats. Similarly, in most presidential elections the winner is the one who raises the most.
This type of system, an increasingly plutocratic one, leads to corruption, where our leaders do the bidding of those who fund their campaigns. While our nation was designed to be secured with a system of checks and balances, we are now being ruled by whoever writes the biggest check and has the biggest balance, and that is not what our founding fathers wanted.
As we continue to allow special interests to rule through powerful lobbying our nation's foundation crumbles beneath our feet. We need to wake up and get involved in our government especially in our communities.
