"Hillary Clinton Donors Indicted"

The Hill offers this report.

"Watchdogs: Campaign Finance Agency is AWOL"

TPMMuckraker offers this report, which quotes (but does not link to) my recent Slate column on the FEC.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports Republicans on FEC want firms to be able to raise money for candidates.

As I said in my Slate piece, the FEC is as good as dead, and I see no hope on the horizon, short of a voluntary decision on the part of Don McGahn to decide to return to private practice. Even then, I can envision a standoff between Sen. McConnell and President Obama over a replacement appointment to the FEC. The idea (mentioned in the TPM piece) that Rep. Issa would consider holding hearings on this question seems laughable to me.

Quinn Replies

Tony Quinn emails:

I had not intended to response to Bruce Cain's post but after the latest from the Secretary of State, I feel it necessary to respond.

I appreciate the washing of hands on what increasingly appears to be a sordid bit of business, first by Bruce and then by the Secretary of State, but I fear some hands may be soiled because they have been caught in the cookie jar.

It always helps to read the law, which says "The Secretary of State shall provide support functions to the commission until its staff and office are fully functional." Period. It says nothing about conducting a staffing process. But the Secretary of State, a partisan office, did post the job openings, with the Secretary of State, not the Commission, as the contact point. Listing of the job applicants and their resumes were never made public, and are not to this day. Go onto the Commission’s website (We Draw The Lines) and see if you can find out anything about the hiring process or who was hired; names and resumes of the staff have never been posted. The last press release is dated December 16, 2010.

Again the law: It says, "The commission shall hire commission staff, legal counsel and consultants as needed." Just how am I to have confidence that the Commission did indeed do the hiring when it is all in secret?

And again: "The records of the commission pertaining to redistricting and all data considered are public records that will be posted in a manner that ensures immediate and widespread public access." Nothing "pertains to redistricting" more than the hiring of the staff, and nothing about that was transparent in the least. The only "public record" we have at all is the pious denial of Ms. Winger that the Secretary of State ever made any decisions for the Commission.

So what am I to think of a secretive process conducted by the office of the Democratic Secretary of State that results in a self-identified partisan Democrat being selected as executive director, who then tries to convince the Commission to hire a redistricting firm with long time partisan Democratic ties on a no bid contract rushed through on a Friday afternoon, perhaps without the Commission even knowing of the partisan history of the firm it is about to hire.

Time for some hand cleanser.

"FEC Divided Over Responses to Questions About Sen. Brown's Planned Autobiography"

BNA offers this report.

"Vague Law, Stable Outcomes: The Example of Money and Judicial Elections"

Rick Pildes has written this post at Balkinization.

CA Secretary of State's Office Responds to Tony Quinn

In a further follow up on this post, Nicole Wnger of the California Secretary of State's office sends along these comments for posting:

Since Tony Quinn has misspoken on the topic at least a couple of times now, the Secretary of State's office wants to set the record straight.

The Citizens Redistricting Commission, created after California voters approved Proposition 11 in 2008, is an independent body. The Secretary of State's office did not make any of the Commission's decisions on hiring or staffing.

Like several other state government entities, the Secretary of State's Office was required to serve a brief role as the Commission got started. The Secretary of State's office was charged only with providing temporary administrative support until the Commission could hire its first staff and start functioning with its own office space and equipment. During the few weeks of temporary support, the Secretary of State's office provided whatever assistance the commissioners requested -- from photocopying to webcasting meetings to posting job announcements -- but never made the Commission's decisions on process or policy.

The Secretary of State's Office assisted the Commission in publicizing its first job openings through the California State Personnel Board, on the Commission's website, and in the Capitol Morning Report, and simply collected the job applications for the CRC. The CRC developed the hiring process and made staffing decisions entirely on its own.

"Report: Grand jury meets to review voter fraud allegations against Indiana secretary of state"

AP offers this report.

Politics and Election Law, Chicago Style

Chicago Reader gives a taste.

"First Amendment Fault Lines and the Citizens United Decision"

Monica Youn has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Harvard Law & Policy Review). Here is the abstract:

This Article argues that in answering the recurring central question of campaign finance doctrine--the question of whether political spending can be treated as speech and, if so, when and to what degree--the Court has employed two competing accounts of First Amendment value. Under the first of these theories, which I call the volitional account, the source of First Amendment value is the volitional impulse of the spender: the spender voluntarily dedicates an expenditure to a particular expressive purpose, thus generating First Amendment value in that particular expenditure. Under the second theory, which I call the commodity account, the market is the source of First Amendment value, which is quantified externally through market measures, such as dollar value, rather than through such individualistic and subjective measures as volition or intensity.

Citizens United marks a new high point for the commodity account and, moreover, presents a major extension of that theory by setting forth a "source-blind" approach to the regulation of money in politics that forbids the state from differentiating among different sources of political spending. The source-blind approach adopted in Citizens United appears to be profoundly at odds with the volitional account of First Amendment value underlying much campaign finance doctrine--the volitional approach requires an inquiry into the degree to which a funding source can be deemed to advance the volitional impulse of the spender; the source-blind approach would seem to forbid such inquiry. This Article concludes by suggesting some of the destabilizing ramifications of this source-blind approach as a First Amendment theory that excludes any volitional considerations.

"House Votes to Cancel F-35 Engine Program"

The NY Times offers this report about some very interesting developments involving this engine--and issue I discuss in some detail in my draft (now forthcoming, Stanford Law Review) on lobbying and rent seeking.

"Judge's ruling expands access to Virginians' voting records"

The Virginian-Pilot offers this report.

"Feingold Forms Political Group to Combat Corporate Influence"

The NY Times "The Caucus" offers this blog post.

"Hearings on Troubled FEC Urged by Reform Groups"

See this press release.