New York Times Quotes Trevor Potter on Recent Confirmation of Federal Election Commissioner

Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States and forced millions of Americans to stay at home, the top floor of the Federal Election Commission was quiet. Three of the six commissioners’ offices sat empty. Stacks of green paper accumulated, detailing hundreds of enforcement matters on which the agency was powerless to act.

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“I think there’s some nod to ‘Gee, it’s not good in an election year to not have an agency that obviously can’t function legally because it doesn’t have the right number of commissioners,’” said Trevor Potter, a Republican and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who runs the Campaign Legal Center. “But it doesn’t solve the problem just to give it a quorum so they can deadlock.”

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Mr. Potter, the former Republican commissioner, called the deadlock dynamic “a clear decay of the institution and the norms,” adding, “John McCain used to say that we’ll have real reform after we’ve had the next colossal scandal.”

Trevor Potter is also a Member of the Political Law Group at Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered.

For the full article, please visit The New York Times’ website.