A Cry for Help From the FEC

Ha again.

A functional FEC -- the ultimate bureaucratic oxymoron -- could have averted a good deal of this damage. The FEC has never been a model of effectiveness; it was deliberately created to have six members, equally divided between the two parties, to avoid any risk of partisan tilt.

But since about 2008, the previous era of FEC gridlock has begun to look like the golden age of activist enforcement. Republican commissioners selected by Sen. Mitch McConnell, an ardent foe of campaign finance, have essentially balked at doing anything but the most skeletal enforcement and regulation -- and that may be a charitable assessment. One measure: The agency collected under $600,000 in fines last year, less than half the 2013 total and a record low, according to the New York Times.

"We're heading into an election where we know we're going to see hundreds of millions of dollars raised and spent in ways designed to keep the American people in the dark about where the money is going to be coming from," Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub told me. "Candidates are interacting with outside spending groups in ways that defy any rational definition of what coordination and independence mean. And here at the FEC we couldn't even find agreement that foreign pornographers shouldn't be spending money to influence American voters."

The FEC, Chairman Ann Ravel told The New York Times in May, is "worse than dysfunctional," and speaking with me, she echoed that bleak assessment.

"I've never been in a situation where people do not appear to support the mission of the agency," she said of Republican commissioners. "On any issues that I think are the most significant matters that the commission faces ... there is not one chance that the Republicans will provide a fourth vote for those issues."

Hence the extraordinary move by Ravel and Weintraub to prod their own agency. They ask it to write rules to ensure "dark money" disclosure and super-PAC independence.

On one level, this is a stunt, doomed to fail. On another, it's an understandable plea for public attention. The Supreme Court notwithstanding, many of the problems with our campaign finance system could be fixed, if the public insisted that those entrusted with policing this mess actually perform their duty.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.