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The leader of the US Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reining in abuses in the 2016 US presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending.
“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” Ann M. Ravel, the chairwoman, said in an interview. “I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the F.E.C. is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.”
Her unusually frank assessment reflects a worsening stalemate among the agency’s six commissioners. They are perpetually locked in 3-to-3 ties along party lines on key votes because of a fundamental disagreement over the mandate of the commission, which was created 40 years ago in response to the political corruption of Watergate.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hash14 on Wednesday May 06 2015, @01:01AM
If you would like a system like that, then you might want to consider arguing against fixed-term elections [wikipedia.org]. An example would be the UK prior to passage of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act [wikipedia.org]. One of the effects of its passage is that now, candidates spend much longer campaigning since they know when the election will happen which, one could argue, distracts from their voting record and actual actions in Parliament. I, for one, feel that a shorter election cycle is a good idea, primarily because it can force politicians to be more responsive to their constituents (see how politicians push for feel-good measures towards the ends of their terms but spend the rest of their terms providing favours to their insiders). But nobody can know for sure whether varying-term elections a good idea for the United States until such a system is implemented, and there are arguments both in favour and against.
More generally speaking, the US democratic process is absurdly broken and useless for many reasons, the worst being the first-past-the-post voting system that is primarily used (indeed, it could even be argued that this is the very reason why money has such a large influence in their elections). In my estimation, the United States probably has a better chance of dissolving than fixing the election system (something of which I am also in favour, primarily as a global citizen...) but it's a good idea to know just why (in my humble opinion, of course) it's so broken.