FEC hunts political ghosts on Halloween
The Federal Election Commission went ghost hunting on Halloween.
The agency on Friday blasted out hundreds of letters to campaign committees that failed to file campaign finance reports on time, including some tied to candidates who are dead, imprisoned, or who have long been out office.
Recipients of the Oct. 31-dated missives include the campaign committee of former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., which has missed every filing deadline since the Illinois Democrat pleaded guilty to a count of felony fraud in February 2013. He was later sentenced to 30 months in prison.
The campaign committee of the late Rep. Bill Janklow, a South Dakota Republican, received a letter, as did that of former Rep. Bill Jefferson (D-La.) — he of the bricks of bribery cash in his freezer — who a jury convicted of corruption in 2009.
The FEC, a small agency with a $65 million budget, is the primary watchdog in charge of overseeing elections — and has been dogged in recent years by ideological gridlock and internal inefficiencies. Campaign committees must regularly file reports with the FEC until they officially terminate, a process that takes some campaign committees years.
The agency sends out letters to active committees that miss a filing deadline. There’s no exception even if the candidate is, well, dead, or has a forwarding address of a federal prison.
An FEC press officer confirmed the agency sent out 372 such letters last Friday.
FEC Vice Chairwoman Ann Ravel explained that the FEC is required by law to post the names of committees that don’t file campaign finance disclosures on time. Therefore, the commission’s regulations require that the letters be sent to make sure no committee name is posted in error.
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This story is part of Primary Source. Primary Source keeps you up-to-date on developments in the post-Citizens United world of money in politics. Click here to read more stories in this blog.
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
