Michael Toner Weighs In On Udall’s Plan to Reform FEC

March 2, 2016

Michael E. Toner, co-chair of Wiley Rein’s Election Law & Government Ethics Practice, was quoted in an article published yesterday in the Santa Fe New Mexican about Sen. Tom Udall’s (D-N.M.) proposed legislation that would overhaul the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

According to the article, Udall’s proposed legislation would replace the current six-person FEC with a single chairperson who has a 10-year term and four additional members serving staggered six-year terms.

“This is sort of like Groundhog Day. You wake up and there’s another proposal to reform the FEC,” Mr. Toner said. He added that cutting the FEC to five members would give one political party control of the agency, something Congress wanted to avoid when it created the FEC in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Its current structure, Mr. Toner said, serves as an “institutional check on partisanship.”

To read the entire article, click here.