The Federal Election Commission Can Finally Meet Again. And It Has A Big Backlog – By Brian Naylor (NPR) / Dec 24 2020
The Federal Election Commission has not been able to operate since July, when a Republican commissioner resigned, leaving the FEC short of the four commissioners necessary to meet and unable fulfill its job of enforcing campaign finance law.
Following Senate action earlier in December, it now has a full compliment of six commissioners: three Democrats, two Republicans and one independent.
Still, former FEC associate counsel Adav Noti is not optimistic that even now the FEC will be able to accomplish much.
“No, I would not say I’m hopeful about the FCC performing any of its functions,” Noti tells NPR. “I think the restoration of the quorum means that the agency will resolve matters. But those resolutions are likely to be partisan deadlocks in all but the most trivial of cases.”
Noti, now senior director for trial litigation and chief of staff at the Campaign Legal Center, says the commission is divided not so much by party, but ideology.
