FEC disabled by the GOP

The FEC has been meticulously crippled by its three Republican commissioners.

They’ve done so for the exact same reason that the GOP has blocked all efforts to conduct
a thorough national census, and the reason why the Roberts Five are working now to neutralize
the Voting Rights Act, and the reason why the DoJ is forcing op-scans on the voters of
New York; and on and on.

The reason for all that is that the GOP, because it cannot win elections honestly, must “win”
through election fraud and vote suppression. That is why the party’s doing everything it can
to make such criminal measures even easier, and largely imperceptible, and (if/when any such
malfeasance might somehow attract attention) quite impossible to prosecute.

Now, as that extremist party keeps it up, we have to ask about the other party, and its weird
refusal even to acknowledge, much less try to stop, all that the GOP is doing to advance itself
despite the will of the electorate.

What gives, AG Holder? What gives, Pres. Obama? Do you think it would be too divisive
to defend the people’s voting rights? Or is it that you’d rather not allow too much democracy,
as it would irk your major funders?

Since neither party will defend those rights of ours, that crucial effort is now up to us (along
with any journalist who also happens to believe in real elections).

MCM

‘The Commission has been roadblocked’:
Republicans’ war on the FEC

By Pete Martin and Zachary Roth – June 30, 2009, 9:13AM

Last fall, James Ross, a New York City resident and a donor to several Democratic organizations, received an unusual letter. “Your name has been put in our database,” Ross was told. “We are monitoring all reports of a wide variety of leftist organizations. As your name appears in subsequent reports, it is our intent to publicize your involvement in your local community. Should any of these organizations be found to be engaged in illegal or questionable activity, it is our intent to publicize your involvement with those activities.”

The letter was signed by Howard Rich, a publicity-shy New York real-estate investor and the founder of the conservative activist group Americans for Limited Government. Rich and his group were accused by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee of illegally using Federal Election Commission disclosure reports to obtain the names and addresses of political donors in order to discourage them from making contributions — a violation of election law. In April, three of the FEC’s six commissioners voted to open an investigation into the matter. But the commission’s three Republicans opposed a probe. The FEC deadlocked 3-3, and no action was taken against Rich.

That’s happened with increasing frequency at the FEC lately. Election-law experts, supporters of campaign-finance regulations, and even some members of the commission itself are expressing growing concern about a string of cases in which the three Republicans on the commission — led by Tom DeLay’s former ethics lawyer — have voted as a block against enforcement, preventing the commission from carrying out its basic regulatory function. As the normally mild-mannered Washington Post editorial board wrote recently: “The three Republican appointees are turning the commission into The Little Agency That Wouldn’t: wouldn’t launch investigations, wouldn’t bring cases, wouldn’t even accept settlements that the staff had already negotiated.”

Read more.

Originally posted: FEC disabled by the GOP

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