FEC Chair Speaks at College

On Wednesday, Oct. 28, Chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Ann Ravel spoke at Dana Auditorium to discuss campaign finance in the 2016 presidential election and the role of money in politics. Ravel was appointed to the FEC by President Barack Obama in 2013.

Created by Congress in 1975, the FEC is the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and accordingly spent. The commission discloses campaign finance information, enforces the provisions of the law, such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions and oversees the public funding of presidential elections.

“The FEC was set up not only to provide disclosure so people could be the enforcement [of political money] … but also [to allow] people to know whether or not they would support a particular candidate based on who was behind that candidate,” Ravel said.

Ravel said that part of the reason why the FEC has failed to rein in abuses in the 2016 presidential campaign is because of the stalemate among the agency’s six commissioners. “[The FEC] is kind of a frustrating place, particularly when you look at what is happening in our present 2016 campaign,” she said. According to estimates, this year’s campaign could generate a record $10 billion in spending.

Her evaluation is a reflection of the commissioners’ perpetual three-to-three ties along party lines, which often inhibits the agency from effectively enforcing laws.

In her talk Ravel noted that the Citizens United Supreme Court case drastically changed political spending in the 2012 presidential election by allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited funds in support of political candidates. “A lot of people complain or say that the whole problem with the campaign finance system today is because of Citizens United,” Ravel said. “[The Citizens United case] is admittedly a convenient way of talking about some of the problems, and it has been used to rally a lot of people to feel anger about what’s happening in the campaign finance system.”

“It seems to me, though, that the real issue in campaign finance, and we see it in this election, isn’t the total amount of money contributed in this campaign ... because really it requires a lot of money to run campaigns ... but the problem that we have is where the money comes from, and the fact that a small slice of people in the country are giving all the money,” she said.

Another problem Ravel elaborated on was the lack of voter turnout. “The number of people who vote now in the country is at the lowest that it has ever been since World War II,” Ravel said. “A lot of this has to do with, I believe, a lack of trust. It has to do with the feeling that they don’t have a voice anyway. They don’t see the need to contribute because of super PACS, so they’re dropping out.”

Ravel called upon individuals to get involved. “Given how the situation is now in campaign finance, it is even more important for people to get involved,” she said. “Talk about [political finance] issues to [Congress] and make them realize how important they are to the policies that are being made. Because unless everyone else participates, politicians are only going to be answerable to this small group of people who are giving all the money and they are not going to be answerable to us.”

Chair of the Political Science Department Bert Johnson described Ravel as an outspoken commissioner in an agency with so few outspoken. “In reaching a broader audience, she is using the power that she doesn’t have in a deadlocked committee” Johnson said, referring to Ravel’s initiatives to getting information out publicly rather than waiting on the commission itself.

“Ravel is a realist but an optimist,” Holly Burke ’15.5 said.

“Money in politics is not the sexiest or coolest topic, but it should be,” said Nora Lenhard ’18, one of the key organizers of the event.