Top Campaign Watchdog Petitions Her Own Agency to Do Its Job
Mother Jones
The Federal Election Commission should just do its job already.
That’s not a #hottake. It’s the formal opinion of the chairwoman of the FEC itself.
In a sign of how bad things have gotten at the government watchdog tasked with keeping federal elections clean, chairwoman Ann Ravel and fellow Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub filed a petition with their own agency this morning pleading for campaign finance rules to be enforced this election cycle. The move is not likely to have earth-shattering consequences, but it’s a sign of desperation—when even the officials who are supposed to be enforcing the law throw up their hands and file a complaint about themselves, to themselves, because there’s no one else to complain to, things are officially off-the-rails.
“People will say: ‘You’re the chair of the commission. You should work from within.’ I tried,” Ravel told CNN Monday. “We needed to take more creative avenues to try and get public disclosure.”
Petitions are almost always filed by outsiders hoping to change policy. The FEC chief now counts herself as one of those outsiders.
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Top Campaign Watchdog Petitions Her Own Agency to Do Its Job
