The Federal Election Commission FEC

Watergate was, among other things, a campaign finance scandal: suitcases of cash, secret corporate contributions, and a slush fund that paid for the burglary. Congress responded with the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act, signed on October 15, 1974, which set contribution and spending limits, created public financing for presidential campaigns, and established the Federal Election Commission to enforce the rules. The Supreme Court struck down the spending limits and the original method of appointing commissioners in Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, and the commission was reconstituted with members appointed by the President.

The FEC administers three things. It collects and publishes the reports that federal candidates, parties, and political committees must file listing who gave them money and how they spent it, the most detailed public record of political money in the world. It enforces contribution limits and the ban on contributions from corporations, unions, foreign nationals, and federal contractors, through audits and civil enforcement, referring knowing and willful violations to the Justice Department. And it runs the presidential public funding system, which nearly every major candidate has declined since 2008 because the spending limits that come with it are too low.

The commission has six members, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for six-year terms, and no more than three may belong to the same party. Any official action, from opening an investigation to issuing a rule, requires four votes. That design was meant to keep either party from turning the agency against the other. In practice it has produced frequent deadlocks along party lines, and critics on both sides describe an agency unable to enforce the law it administers. About 300 people work there.

The FEC's jurisdiction shrank as the courts expanded the protection of political spending. Citizens United v. FEC in 2010 allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts independently of candidates, and a lower court decision the same year led to super PACs, which raise and spend unlimited sums. Money that moves through nonprofit groups not required to disclose donors largely escapes FEC reporting. In 2025 resignations and a removal left the commission without the four members it needs for a quorum, so it could not open investigations, issue advisory opinions, or adopt rules, though disclosure filings continued.