McCain's Counsel Speaks

So John McCain’s lawyer, Trevor Potter, was asked a question, and he chose, bravely, to answer. The question was whether John McCain had anything to say about the sudden ouster of the FEC Commissioner, David Mason, who had challenged the Senator’s exploitation of the primary matching fund system. Senator McCain, responding through counsel, had choices: he could deny involvement, or own up to his part, or express an opinion, just an opinion, on the subject.

(5/8/08) Read More

The FEC Reshaped, by Republican Presidential Politics

The White House has unveiled its plans for the Federal Election Commission and David Mason is not in them. Hans von Spakovsky did make the cut, and he shares the Republican list with two party lawyers, Don McGahn and Caroline Hunter. Democrats would keep Steve Walther and add Cynthia Bauerly; Ellen Weintraub would hold over. It appears, but it is not confirmed, that the nominees would be considered one by one, with a vote on each, and the Republicans will have to put up their last stand for von Spakovsky.

(5/7/08) Read More

“Amicus Courts” and the Role of Elites in Election Reform

One worthy objective of reform is to contain, to keep within reasonable limits, the partisan contamination of election administration and dispute resolution. Particularly distressing has been the suspicion settling on the judiciary, its reputation smudged by imputed partisanship from Bush v. Gore to state court decision-making that seems to correlate closely with the political affiliation of judges. A longing for neutrality and expertise has led to proposals to shame the judiciary into more respectable performance.

(5/6/08) Read More

Public Financing and the “Middle Ground” in Campaign Finance Regulation

Judge Harvie Wilkinson of the Fourth Circuit, author of the Leake decision and Bill Moyers of public television and the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy would seem to have nothing like a meeting of the minds on campaign finance regulation.

Wilkinson is cool on corruption, unconvinced that there is cause for excitement, or for intrusive limits on speech, in how elections are financed. Moyers gets very excited: he is sure that the country is going to the dogs in very large measure because the wealthy control, by financing, our elections. So by the light of their most recent publications—Wilkinson’s in his Leake opinion, Moyer’s in essays appearing his newly published volume Moyers on Democracy (2008)—a great distance seems to separate them.

(5/5/08) Read More

Campaign Finance Regulation and Its Problems in the Fourth Circuit

The Fourth Circuit panel that yesterday issued North Carolina Right to Life v. Leake was certainly ready to award all ties to the speaker. The opinion ranges across three provisions of North Carolina campaign finance law, narrowing the application of all of them.

One of the Court’s two primary concerns is to limit the complexity of the law and therefore the administrative discretion of the State. At the point that the law seems hard to understand and uncertain in application, the Court decides that it should be pared back and the choice of the regulator restricted. This perspective dominates the holdings that a) the State cannot use “contextual” factors to decide whether a communication supports or opposes a candidate; and b) a political committee, to be regulated as such, must have “the” and not only “a” major purpose of supporting or opposing candidates.

(5/2/08) Read More