ComputerWorld interviewed James Allen, the IT manager at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), a month ago and reposted it yesterday. One line in the interview really stood out to me:

We have a T1 line to the Senate so they can file their reports securely and quickly.

After the data has been cleared by our analysts — and we have a 48-hour turnaround time — we post it on the public Web site.

Emphasis added. The Senate does not require the electronic filing of campaign finance reports and most reports, including ours, show that the lack of electronic filing causes gaps in disclosure. Since every office uses the software necessary to file electronically (the last office to use noncompliant software was that of retired Sen. Paul Sarbanes) and the Senate maintains a T1 line directly connected to the FEC, how many Senate offices actually file electronically?

Voluntary filing is allowed, even encouraged. FEC rules also state that, “Once a committee begins to file its reports electronically, on a voluntary basis, it must continue to file electronically for the remainder of the calendar year unless the Commission determines that extraordinary and unforeseeable circumstances make continued electronic filing impractical.”

You can read the rest of the interview here.

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• Lawyers allege that Sen. Ted Stevens received additional gifts outside of the over $250,000 in labor and renovations to his chalet. These gifts included a $2,695 massage chair, a $1,000 sled dog, and a $3,200 “hand-designed” stained glass window.
• Rep. Charles Rangel will recommend that the House Ethics Committee look into his personal finances after reports from the New York Post and New York Times revealed that Rangel failed to properly report income from a Dominican vacation home on both his personal financial disclosures and his income taxes.
• However, an Ethics Committee investigation may take time as the committee does not have a chairman at this time following the tragic death of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones. Rep. Gene Green is the likely temporary replacement, although Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t appoint Green until after a Sept. 10 memorial service for Tubbs Jones.
• The Federal Election Commission will hold a hearing on Sept. 17 on proposed rules for the disclosure of contributions bundled by registered lobbyists.

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From the Open Secrets blog Capital Eye, the Federal Election Commission put out a release showing a 1.3% increase in the number of registered political action committees over the last seven months. The best part of this release by the FEC is a long chart detailing PAC registrations from 1974 to the present. I broke down this down into some cool charts below:

As Massie Ritch points out at Capital Eye, corporate PACs outpaced others, particularly labor PACs, by quite a bit. That wasn’t always the case:

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As Ellen wrote previously here, former Bush administration Justice Department official Hans Von Spakovsky’s nomination to the Federal Election Commission was highly controversial due to concerns about stands he took on voting rights while in the Justice Department. These concerns led some Democrats to block his nomination. The President and congressional Republicans refused to hold a vote on any other commissioners without support for Von Spakosky, effectively freezing the Commission. The Commission is currently short on commissioners and is unable to issue rulings on a variety of issues including the filing of disclosure reports for bundled contributions from lobbyists. Moments ago, Von Spakovsky pulled his name from nomination all but clearing the way to a fully operational Federal Election Commission. His letter to President Bush is below the fold:

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We’ve written fairly often about unbelievable situation over the Federal Election Commission. Always regarded as a toothless watchdog even in the best of days, since there’s been a partisan stalemate over new appointments, it’s been totally neutered. 

Now, Paul Kiel reports that the Bush Administration has offered a so-called compromise. The most controverisal nominee — Spakovsky –  remains a nominee, and an administration spokesperson told the The New York Times that they would accept a separate vote on him. In the meantime, the administration has submitted a new nominee to replace FEC Chair David Mason, one of the two setting commissioners.

But here’s the rub: Mason has opposed a move by Sen. John McCain to pull his presidential campaign out of the public finance system. McCain had earlier joined the system and accepted the $54 million spending limit. Mason’s position is that the FEC would have to approve his request to leave the system, and that he couldn’t just opt out. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is spending away and has long surpassed the spending limit. Bush’s solution…Good bye Chairman Mason.

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Among the potentially meaningful and important changes to the law in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act is a provision that requires candidates for federal office to report the bundled contributions they receive from lobbyists. Bundled contributions are among the most insidious sources of campaign money because they give a single donor the opportunity to get credit for raising contributions that are often hundreds of times greater than the legal limits applied to individuals. The massive contributions no doubt result in greater access to elected officials. At Sunlight, we believe bundled contributions from any party-CEOs, non-lobbyist lawyers and law firms-should be publicly disclosed. But, the new law limits such disclosure to registered lobbyists, which at least begins to get to the heart of the problem.

The key to this well-intended provision is to ensure that when it is applied, it is not so full of loopholes that any lobbyist worth her $500 an hour fee finds a way to avoid reporting the bundled contributions she forwards to candidates. The Federal Election Commission has the responsibility of crafting regulations that carry out the intent of the new law. The FEC asked for public comment on its proposed rules, and made those comments available yesterday. The comments came from three Members of Congress, groups that champion ethics reform, and others who, for reasons of their own (or their clients) seem to want to keep bundled contributions hidden in the shadows.

To focus on the positive, we applaud Sen. Feingold and Sen. Obama and Representative Van Hollen for their joint comments reminding the FEC that it has a statutory duty to provide "the broadest possible disclosure" of bundled contributions. This group’s comments make clear that they will oppose narrow reporting requirements that would allow bundlers to easily skirt disclosure. For example, when an individual who is not registered as a lobbyist bundles contributions from, say, a group of employees of a corporation that lobbies, the comments submitted by the Members of Congress make clear that those bundled contributions must be disclosed if the corporation’s lobbyist gets credit from the campaign for bringing them in. Comments that were submitted by lawyers for candidates argue that the bundling reporting requirements should apply only when registered lobbyists bundle. They claim the law was not intended to cover people who are clearly acting as the lobbyists’ agents. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that such a limitation would provide a foolproof way for lobbyists to skirt the disclosure provisions of the law.

Another recommendation proffered by a representative of business interests would similarly provide an instant loophole to the disclosure provisions. The argument is that when lobbyists hold fundraisers, the total amount raised should be pro-rated among the number of hosts. Again, it’s not a stretch to imagine that enough lobbyist "hosts" could be added to every fundraiser so that, when the total amount raised is divided among the hosts, the $15,000 disclosure threshold would never be met. We agree with Senators Feingold, Obama and Congressman Van Hollen that the total amounts raised should be attributed to each host. A disclosure form could easily be crafted to ensure there is no risk of over-reporting the actual total amount brought in at each fundraiser.

On one final issue, we would again urge the FEC to listen to the drafters of the legislation rather than the lawyers looking to game the system. Politicians have multiple ways of knowing whom to credit for delivering bundled contributions, not the least of which is when the chief fundraiser says to the candidate, "Lester Lobbyist brought in $50,000 last week." This type of credit is not documented, nor does it need to be, as when Lester wants to make an appointment with the Senator, the Senator will surely remember the bundled contributions. The authors of the legislation recognize that "campaigns could easily avoid [disclosure] by simply forgoing documentation, and the goal of shining a public spotlight on fundraising by lobbyists would be foiled." Granted, we at Sunlight have a hard time seeing how this particular provision will be enforced, but at the very least the rule should be crafted in a way that recognizes the reality of how bundled contributions work.

The FEC expects to have its final regulations completed by March. We hope they take their advice from the parties who have long demonstrated a commitment to improving disclosure rather than those who have everything to gain by keeping bundled contributions in the dark.

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It looks like a leading champion of "voter integrity" (read "voter suppression") and the Bush Administration’s chief operative on voting rights, Hans von Spakovsky, will survive the Senate confirmation process, and will be confirmed as an FEC Commissioner. The Senate Rules Committee was considering four appointments, three noncontroversial nominees as well as the highly problematic Spakovsky. The fight over Spakovsky’s nomination bottled up the process for 18 months, with Sen. Mitch McConnell blocking a vote (he certainly makes a habit of that!) on the other three FEC nominees until von Spakovsky was considered as well. Spakovsky would likely survive a vote on the four collectively, but his chances to prevail on speparate votes is not good. It appears McConnell has prevailed. On Wednesday, the Rules Committee advanced the four nominations to the Senate floor for a vote without the committee’s approval or disapproval. Rules Committee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein said it was "doubtful" there’d be a chance that the votes would be taken separately.

The Federal Election Commission is a toothless wonder. Members of both parties have insuured that it’s "no bark, no bite". The current agency doesn’t carry out its enforcement responsibilities, and hasn’t for some time. What we need is a new agency to enforce the nation’s campaign finance laws. But still….

Seeing such an advocate for selective voter suppression confirmed by the Senate to the FEC is especially galling. The fight over who has the right to vote continues to be a volatile front in American politics. And in each battle from the 2000 Florida recount, voter suppression in the following Congressional and presidential elections, to the purging of U.S. Attorneys, Hans von Spakovsky keeps popping up like Zelig. Back in 1997, he wrote the game plan to purge election rolls of felons which was used to deny the vote to thousands of non-felon minority voters in Florida; he advised the Bush campaign during the Florida recount; while at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department he undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights and was accused by Justice Department officials of blocking investigations of minority voter intimidation, and then there was his close relationship with Bradley Schlozman during the U.S. Attorney scandal, which again, had voter suppression at its core.

Let’s hope the Senate will try to restore some respect for the commission and find a way to block this nomination.

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