Election Assistance Commission Enter Election Short-Handed

Published on September 10, 2008 10:20 AM
by Brad Smith

File Under: Other

On June 24 the United States Senate confirmed Caroline Hunter for a seat on the Federal Election Commission, and she then resigned from the federal Election Assistance Commission to take her new seat.  President Bush moved smartly to fill the vacancy, sending the name of Gineen Bresso Beach, Counsel to the House Committee on House Administration (which has oversight of both the FEC and the EAC) to the Senate to fill the vacancy on July 31 .  Now it appears that Senate Rules Committee Chair Diane Feinstein (D-CA) will not have a hearing or call a vote to move Beach's nomination to the Senate floor.  The Senate meets for just two and a half more weeks, and after cancelling this week's hearing, no more hearings of any kind are scheduled for the Rules Committee.  This means that entering the last two months of the campaign, Democrats will have a 2-1 majority on the EAC, which is intended to be balanced 2-2.  We are unaware of any objection voiced to Beach.  It seems the is just too darned busy to address the issue.

Earlier this year the FEC spent nearly six months not merely without a full contingent, but without a quorum - a problem that began last fall when Senator Obama blocked a deal that Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had worked out to hold votes on FEC appointments.  We're not big fans of either of these bureaucracies, but as we said during the time of the FEC vacancies, so long as these agencies exist it is better to have them working properly.  We think it would be good for both Senators Obama and McCain to call for a hearing - after all, both these candidates remain members of the Senate, and both should want a fully staffed EAC heading into the election.

If only there were more 527s:  we need one to run some ads: "Call Senators Reid and Feinstein, and tell them we need a vote on EAC appointments."