29. Federal Election Commission

Project 2025 link: FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION

Who wrote this chapter? Hans von Spakovsky, Heritage Foundation employee and notorious author of voter suppression measures.

“(motherjones) In a private meeting last month [2021] with big-money donors, the head of a top conservative group boasted that her outfit had crafted the new voter suppression law in Georgia and was doing the same with similar bills for Republican state legislators across the country. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” she said, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”

The Georgia law had “eight key provisions that Heritage recommended,” Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action for America, a sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, told the foundation’s donors at an April 22 gathering in Tucson, in a recording obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with Mother Jones. Those included policies severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes, preventing election officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters, making it easier for partisan workers to monitor the polls, preventing the collection of mail ballots, and restricting the ability of counties to accept donations from nonprofit groups seeking to aid in election administration. 

All of these recommendations came straight from Heritage’s list of “best practices” drafted in February. With Heritage’s help, Anderson said, Georgia became “the example for the rest of the country.”

Great Stop the Coup Summary:

  •  Ensure FEC appointees are loyalists prepared to execute the president’s agenda
  • ✓  Limit DOJ enforcement action of FECA violations
  • ✓  Authorize the DOJ to defend public lawsuits against the FEC
  • ✓  Propose Congressional action to reduce FEC independence, weaken campaign finance and reporting laws, raise monetary limitations on contributions.

Now you know the “Who.” On with the chapter…

  • (Pg. 861) The “Mission/Overview” lays out the traditional role of the FEC:

“The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent federal agency that began operations in 1975 to enforce the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) passed by Congress in 1971 and amended in 1974. FECA governs the raising and spending of funds in all federal campaigns for Congress and the presidency. The FEC has no authority over the administration of federal elections, which is performed by state governments.

While the FEC has exclusive civil enforcement authority over FECA, the U.S. Justice Department has criminal enforcement authority, which is defined as a knowing and willful violation of the law. Because the FEC is an independent agency and not a division or office directly within the executive branch, the authority of the President over the actions of the FEC is extremely limited.

Well, that’s not acceptable to the group pressing for a president’s unlimited executive power.

  • (Pg. 862) KNOW WHO IS TALKING TO YOU!: While discussing the process for which bipartisan commissioners are chosen, it was revealed that the author of this section – Hans von Spakovsky – was NOT confirmed along with a Democratic candidate, the only time in a 50-year tradition that both nominees weren’t slid into their seats. Hmmm. Interesting. Apparently, his record of pursuing policies that systematically blocked voting access to poor and minority voter in his role as a Department of Justice (DOJ) official was well known. Now at the Heritage Foundation, he “is a leading purveyor of the notion that voter fraud is rampant, claims that have been largely discredited.” and is behind their database on voter fraud, which only has approximately 1500 cases, since 1982, and literally billions of votes.
    • The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
    • (Slate) Do Not Vote for This Guy
    • (intercept) “When von Spakovsky was appointed [to the short-lived Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which did nothing], a number of election observers pointed to frequent cases in which he exaggerated claims of voter fraud. University of California, Irvine law professor Rick Hasen, an expert on legal issues around elections, has challenged von Spakovsky’s false claims about voter fraud. “Von Spakovsky is not a credible person on issues of election reform,” Hasen wrote on his blog.”
    • (intercept) Heritage Foundation, his employer, was founded by Paul Weyrich, who stated at a rally in 1980, “They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. …Elections are not won by a majority of people; they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now,” Weyrich continued. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
  • (Pg. 863) The president should make sure that the Republican nominees are carbon copies of retiring commissioners and that the president “negotiate” with the Democratic Party leader to provide mild-mannered replacements for their people when necessary.
  • (Pg. 863) Lot of word-salad-ry here, but the key point is that the president under Project 2025 will have full control of the DOJ, and it will be business-as-usual for him and his compatriots to mutate voting rights to disadvantage the same groups as he did before.
  • (Pg. 864) Instead of waiting for 4 votes from the FEC to defend itself against litigation, the president will direct his captive DOJ to defend the FEC in all litigation.
  • (Pg. 865) Wait! It gets better! The president should just change FECA to remove the agency’s independent litigation authority and just hand it all over to the DOJ
  • (Pg. 865) Oppose all efforts to reduce the number of commissioners from 6 to 5 or another odd number. The current arrangement suits the GOP fine, keeping the commission helplessly deadlocked and removes the spector of a potential Democrat majority from making meaningful change under Democratic presidents. 
  • (Pg. 866) Raise contribution limits and index reporting requirements to inflation. Standard GOP agenda.

Note about the Heritage Foundation voter fraud database: (propublica)”At the Heritage Foundation, von Spakovsky maintains a database of voter fraud cases and, emails show, regularly urges secretaries of state to contribute to it. At the moment, the database encompasses some 1,300 [now 1500] cases, stretching over a period that begins in 1982. As Reuters recently noted, billions of ballots were cast during that time.” (Great analysis of this database’s numbers by the Brennan Center here.)

What should happen?

According to the Brennan Center, these are the improvements we actually need.

  • Change the number of commissioners, with at least one political independent: To reduce gridlock and allow for decisive policymaking, Congress should change the Commission’s structure to give it an odd number of five commissioners, with no more than two from each of the major political parties. Congress should specify that at least one commissioner be a political independent who has neither been affiliated with nor worked for one of the two major parties or their officeholders or candidates in the five years preceding their appointment.
  • Establish an inclusive, bipartisan process to vet potential nominees. As an added safeguard, Congress should require the president to convene a blue-ribbon advisory panel to help vet potential nominees. The panel should have representation from both major parties. Congress should also require reasonable steps consistent with the Constitution to ensure that people of color and other underrepresented communities have a voice in the selection process.
  • Give the agency a real leader who is accountable to the president. To ensure clearer lines of accountability for the Commission’s management, Congress should provide that the president will designate one commissioner to serve as the agency’s chair during the president’s term. The chair would have the power to supervise Commission staff, approve its budget, and otherwise act as the agency’s chief administrator, but with sufficient checks to prevent partisan abuse of the office and ensure the Commission’s continued independence from the White House.
  • End the practice of allowing commissioners to remain in office indefinitely as holdovers. To ensure that the Commission has regular infusions of fresh leadership with an appropriate degree of independence, Congress should limit commissioners to two statutory terms and end the practice of letting them serve indefinitely past the expiration of their terms until a successor arrives.
  • Overhaul the Commission’s civil enforcement process.