It's not a name that's familiar to a lot of people, but it may be the most important government agency you've never heard of. So first, the Federal Election Commission, the FEC. And we certainly saw this in 2016 when Russia published thousands of fake political ads on social media in an attempt to influence the outcome of the US election. This is another area of campaign finance law with a potential for devastating consequences when there are gaps in the system. In part two of our episode, we'll dive into some of our campaign finance laws, specifically laws that regulate digital political ads and how they've failed to keep up as we've shifted to living in an increasingly digital world. But we'll get into the details of that case later.
This has serious consequences and prevents progress on issues like gun safety, rising healthcare costs and stagnant wages.įor example, the FEC's failure to act on complaints submitted by the Giffords organization allowed the National Rifle Association to go unpunished for illegally coordinating huge amounts of campaign spending with the Trump campaign and a handful of Senate campaigns over multiple election cycles. Though that may sound a little dry, it's a hugely important job, and the failure of the FEC to enforce campaign finance laws in recent years has resulted in an explosion of secret spending. The FEC is the only government agency tasked solely with overseeing the integrity of our political campaigns. We'll kick today's episode off by taking a hard look at the Federal Election Commission, also known as the FEC. Today, we're going to take a closer look at some of those laws themselves and the gaps in them, as well as the government agency responsible for enforcing them. Over the past few episodes of this podcast, we've learned about several campaign finance laws and how they affect our lives through issues large and small. Why does American democracy look the way it does today, and how can we make it more responsive to the people it was formed to serve? I'm Simone Leeper, and this is Democracy Decoded, a podcast where we examine our government and discuss innovative ideas that could lead to a stronger, more transparent, accountable and inclusive democracy.
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