The Election Referee Is Missing—and the Money Is Pouring In

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Two weeks left in the 2026 midterm elections. Billions of dollars are flowing through campaigns, parties, and political committees. However, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the rules that govern all of this money is effectively powerless.

For nearly 18 months, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has lacked the minimum number of commissioners required to investigate alleged election and campaign law violations, including campaign finance.

It also cannot issue penalties or adopt new regulations—and this won’t change before Election Day.

According to The Washington Post, the agency's report backlog of potential violations has grown from 21 before the shutdown to 157. Meanwhile, the FEC collected $0 in civil penalties during FY2026.

In the last fiscal year, it collected over a million dollars.

All of this begs the question: What is the point of an enforcement agency if it has been designed in such a way that it can't perform its most important functions?

IVN Warned This Was Coming

These problems aren’t new.

In May 2025, IVN published an extensive breakdown of how the FEC works, its bipartisan structure, and how that very structure had increasingly become a liability even when it had all the commissioners it needed for its enforcement duties.

The FEC was established following Watergate with six commissioners, no more than three from the same political party. The idea was to prevent either party from weaponizing campaign finance enforcement against the other.

However, partisan disagreements (particularly over the last two decades) increasingly produced deadlocks that prevented investigations from moving forward. So, instead of weaponizing the agency, both parties rendered it useless.

As noted in IVN’s previously reporting, a 2021 Campaign Legal Center analysis found that commissioners deadlocked on approximately 40% of substantive enforcement votes between 2017 and 2020.

Then the situation got worse:

Republican Commissioner Sean Cooksey departed the agency in January 2025.
President Donald Trump removed Democratic Chair Ellen Weintraub in February 2025, a move Weintraub contested as illegal.
Republican Allen Dickerson's departure at the end of April brought the commission below the four-member quorum needed for major decisions.
THEN, another Republican, Trey Trainor, departed in October 2025, leaving just two Democratic commissioners: Shana Broussard and Dara Lindenbaum.

In February 2026, Trump nominated Republicans Ashley Stow and Andrew Woodson to fill two vacancies. IVN reported in March that even confirming both nominees would leave the commission vulnerable to partisan deadlocks.

More than seven months later, neither nominee has been confirmed.

Complaints Are Piling Up. Enforcement Isn't.

The FEC has not completely shut its doors. Staff continue to collect and publish campaign finance disclosures, provide general information about existing rules, and receive complaints.

Here’s the thing: Determining whether an illegal contribution occurred, or money was improperly routed, or a PAC violated coordination restrictions requires investigative powers that FEC staff cannot exercise independently.

As a result, the commission’s entire enforcement caseload (not just pending reports as mentioned above) doubled over a year, according to an October 7 CBS News investigation. The number of cases went from 154 to 307.

The report also revealed that when lawmakers requested help addressing AI-generated election misinformation, Commissioner Broussard explained that the agency could not proceed without a quorum.

Even candidates attempting to comply with the law can be left without answers.

Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna sought guidance on whether campaign funds could cover childcare expenses while she performed congressional duties. The FEC could not issue a formal advisory opinion.

The problem isn't simply that potential violators can get away with their crimes. Candidates trying to follow the rules cannot always get definitive guidance on what those rules permit.

The Money Keeps Moving

The enforcement vacuum comes as increasingly sophisticated political organizations channel large sums of cash into federal elections.

Consider the rapidly expanding role of AI companies and investors.Wired reported on October 13 that the pro-AI political network Leading the Future has poured more than $140 million into the 2026 elections.

Campaign Legal Center filed an FEC complaint in May alleging potential violations of disclosure requirements involving companies connected to the network.But, without the needed quorum, the FEC cannot do anything with the allegations.

And the existence of a complaint by itself does not establish wrongdoing.

This is not a problem isolated to a single party.

In one dispute, Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic-aligned organization, accused the National Republican Senatorial Committee of improperly using funds from specialized party accounts for campaign advertisements.

The FEC could not act on the complaint, and a federal judge dismissed the resulting lawsuit in September, finding that a court order could not provide meaningful relief while the agency lacked the votes required to proceed.

Campaign finance watchdogs have also filed allegations involving Trump and his political allies,

In August, Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley filed an FEC complaint against California Democratic congressional candidate Aisha Wahab and the Alameda County Democratic Party. He accused them of improperly routing $60,000 from Wahab's campaign account to the party.

All of these allegations are different, but they share a common problem: Without a functioning enforcement process, who is going to look into the complaints? And how long will they go unresolved?

A Broken Agency by Design?

There is a deeper issue in this story.

Getting four commissioners to ensure the FEC has the quorum it needs only addresses one part of the agency’s dysfunction. Even if there are two Democrats and two Republicans, the partisan divide may still get in the way.

When party loyalty is put ahead of independent enforcement, it compromises the fundamental purpose of the institution at a time when most Americans—Republicans, Democrats, and independents—do not trust the massive amount of money they see flooding elections.

IVN previously examined proposed structural reforms, including reducing the commission to five members to prevent tie votes, giving an independent enforcement director greater authority to investigate complaints, and requiring more timely appointments.

Critics of aggressive enforcement, meanwhile, argue that strong bipartisan safeguards are necessary to prevent campaign finance regulation from becoming a weapon against political opponents and political speech.

Regardless, one thing is clear. The present arrangement has created something fundamentally different from bipartisan oversight: an agency that cannot exercise its most important powers at all.

The FEC was sold to the public as a way to ensure elections had an independent referee capable of holding political actors accountable, regardless of party.

Today, the rules still exist. Campaigns must still file disclosures. Complaints can still be submitted. But the referee cannot flag rule violations when they happen or penalize those that break election rules.