FEC Commissioner: Everyone Else Should Quit

A member of the Federal Election Commission is calling for all of her colleagues to leave the agency, saying on Thursday that it would be a "simple fix" for eliminating stalemates in voting. She also proposed an ideological litmus test that would prevent disagreements among future commissioners.

"To say that the FEC was intended to stalemate is absurd," Commissioner Ann Ravel said in a speech at the Brookings Institution. "Congress established the FEC in the wake of the biggest scandal and constitutional crisis in this country since the Civil War," she said, referring to its 1975 formation in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.

"There's ... a simple fix," Ravel said. "The term of every other commissioner has expired," she said, insinuating that they should quit or get fired.

Members of the commission are appointed by the president to six-year terms, subject to approval by Congress. In the event the president and Congress cannot agree on appointees, incumbent commissioners retain their positions, something has happened under Presidents Obama and Bush. By law, no more than half of the commission's members may come from one party.

Ravel has objected to the rule dividing the commission, saying it allows half of the members to "vote as a bloc," and argued that Congress should reconstitute the commission by firing her colleagues and building it back up in a manner that allows one party to dominate.

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