Companies and the banks. I work for you. Helping businesses compete, allowing families to refinance Student Loans and veterans get health care close to home. Getting the job done for new hampshire. Im jeanne shaheen. I approved this message. I did not just moved here. I live here. I would be honored to have your vote. On the next washington gonzales of the rothenberg political report. Then we will get analysis from Jessica Taylor of the hill newspaper, aron blake of the washington post, Josh Kraushaar of the national journal. You can join the conversation with Carlton Cummins on facebook and twitter. Today, a discussion on the technologies and research at work to create hiv vaccine and other treatments. An event is hosted by the center for strategic and international studies. Live coverage at 2 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan. Throughout campaign 2014, cspan has brought you more than 130 candidate debates from across the country in races that will determine control of the next congress. Tonight, watch cspans live Election Night coverage to see who wins, who loses, and which party will control the house and senate. Our coverage begins at 8 00 p. M. Eastern with results and analysis. Candidatelso see victory and concession speeches in some of that most closely watched senate races in the country. Throughout the night and into the morning, we want to hear with the we want to hear from you. Campaign 2014 Election Night coverage on cspan. The 2015 cspan student cam video competition is underway, open to all middle and High School Students to create a five minute documentary on the theme the three branches and you. Are 200 cash prizes for students and teachers totaling 100,000. How toist of rules and get started, go to cspan. Org. Now a discussion on Campaign Financing and issues. Is one hour. Ok, welcome, everyone, to this panel on Campaign Finance. Is titled, money talks, free speech, Political Action committees, and we will do with all those issues in the next 60 minutes. Please note that english is on channel seven, french on channel nine, indonesia on channel 10, and spanish on channel 11. You doneed a headset and not have one yet, please indicate that to our colleagues providing them. Ohman. Gnus next week i will celebrate having been here for 10 years. Pleasure ofhe working in many parts around the world. More importantly, we have two prominent speakers with us today. My fark on my far left is Trevor Potter, the former commissioner and chairman of the federal Election Commission. He is republican and he was counsel for john mccains 2008 president ial campaign. He is also a member of the washington, d. C. , law firm of kaplan and drysdale. Specializingington in issues in money and politics. On my direct left is ellen weintraub, nominated to the federal Election Commission in 2002 and who has since twice, as chairman of that commission, and in the true interest of bipartisanship, she is a democrat. Aas previously counsel member of a political longer where she counseled clients on federal and state Campaign Finance and election laws, nonprofit law, recounts, and regulations. Before that, she was counsel to the house of representatives ethics committee. She also served as editor in chief of the house ethics manual and a political contributor to the state Senate Ethics manual, two documents that i am sure are needed. Members ons investigations and has responsibility for the committees Public Education and compliance initiatives. We have discussed this session in advance, and Trevor Potter will start by giving an overview of the case law in this area. Ellen weintraub will then discuss the resulting spending disclosured the consequences in this particular election cycle. Following these presentations, we will open the floor for your questions and interventions. Factors thaty follow these processes, and many are covered in the election program. But one factor that is always important is the role of money in the electoral process. I have yet to visit any country where people tell me that money is not important in our elections. Whether it is huge spending on orertising or vote buying use of state resources are currently in the candidate nomination in the candidate this the importance of factor is recognized around the world, and in the recent study , they could not find a single one that did not have at least some legislation in this field. It includes some latecomers, including my own native sweden, which passed its first law in this field in april of this year. There is also a growing understanding that creating laws is only the first step. Politicalajority of party and Campaign Finance laws around the world are not implemented. Reform is angal important part of our work with political funds, but it is only the first step. The vast majority of our work focuses on supporting the implementation of such regulations. As part of this, we cooperate with many Public Institutions such as election management bodies that have a mandate to enforce legislative provisions. I want to mention the recently published political finance oversight handbook, which is in your packet, and there are more Copies Available outside. This is, in turn, part of our training in the enforcement curriculum. One of the people who helped us to field test this curriculum is commissioner weintraub. We also spend a lot of time assisting Civil Society groups that monitor Campaign Finance, including the elections last week. Their report, which should be out in a month or so, would be the first Campaign Finance monitoring report ever in tunisia if not in north africa. Ifesg the last 15 years, has supported Political Initiative in over 40 countries, and there is no sign that the need for this work is declining. One example is the united states. Camethough the first rules in this country over a century ago and several decades have passed since the legal reform in the 1970s, there is still a lot of work to be done. Many are arguing that the transparency and oversight are roleole of money or the of money in u. S. Politics has gradually gotten worse in the last few years. We will hear more about these two issues from our two speakers. Trevorhand it over to potter. Thank you, magnus, and it is a pleasure to be with you today here at ifes. I have had time to spend groups i have spent time with groups like yours. It gives me a step to it gives me a chance to step back and think through what you are about to see, but i have to say that i think what you are about to see, explained by commissioner weintraub and myself, is probably more confusing today than at any time that i have known in my professional career, so i do not necessarily envy you trying to figure it all out. We are trying to figure it out ourselves. But i am glad you are here. Magnus, thank you for your opening remarks, sort of setting things in context, because i think americans tend to forget there are other democracies in the world struggling with the same issues we are. They are not unique, and i think from your perspective you will have the opportunity to see how the issues that magnus has beend on how money has spent, how money is disclosed, faced by any country having an election. Has is a constitutional system, so we have a constitution that is set up that created two houses of congress and an executive branch and an independent judicial branch. Congress passes laws, which means they have to pass both chambers, the house and senate, and then they have to be signed by the president. Law, but they are interpreted by the Supreme Court under two circumstances either if a case arises where a party says we think the law says x and another party, or the y, and then its goes to the court to interpret what congress met. The other situation is someone whose activity is governed by it is contraryat to the constitution, that a regulatory system is not permitted by the constitution. That actually is something that the court has said frequently in recent years. History, theur court had nothing at all to say about congressional regulation of money and politics come on who could spend on disclosure. In the middle of the 20th century, we had a scandal you may have heard of called the watergate scandal, which involves a great deal of money being spent by the Reelection Campaign of president nexen, some of it contrary of president nixon, some of it contrary to some of it not disclosed, some of it appearing as a bribe. Congress enacted a new set of laws reacting to that that limited money, disclosed money. And there, our Supreme Court stepped in, and what they said ,s that our constitution specifically the First Amendment of the constitution, limited the power of government to regulate the raising and spending and disclosure of money in politics. In myrst amendment is, experience, reasonably unique amongst countries in that it is an absolute prohibition on government doing certain things. Is Congress Shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for the redress of grievances. Toeof this went back to the of the regulation to the regulation in the 1700s and was a reaction to the things the British Government had done in the american colonies. But if you listen carefully, you did not hear anything about the government regulating or not regulating the spending of money in elections. What has happened over time and it has been incremental is that the u. S. Supreme court has interpreted the piece of that that says, Congress Shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech to encompass spending money in elections or giving money to candidates or parties as a version of speaking. The theory being that clearly speech is standing on a Street Corner and speaking. It might be standing on a Street Corner and speaking with a microphone, although you would have to pay money for the microphone you have to buy it somewhere and certainly if you are speaking by taking out Television Advertisements in a system where we do not have government television, it is all commercial and you have to pay for advertising or mailings or phone calls or staff, all of that costs money. Saide Supreme Court has there are circumstances in which government may regulate the spending of money. There are others in which it may not. , we are going to decide when those cases come to us. It makes figuring out what to do and what the government may do in this area very complicated, particularly because the population, the members of the Supreme Court, change over time. So, as an example, congress in 2002,e 2002 the mccainfeingold Campaign Reform act, which was designed to deal with problems that congress thought had arisen since the watergate lost 30 years before. Challenged ine the court. They were almost entirely upheld by the Supreme Court. Then there was a change of one justice who retired. A replacement felt differently, and the court since then has gone back and struck down important pieces of the law they had just upheld. So if youre congress so if you are congress writing a law, you do best, but youre not sure what the court is going to do, and the court itself may not depending who is on it at that point. The final piece of the structure that complicates life is that we have, as i am sure all of you do, administrative agencies whose job is to interpret, to explain and to enforce the laws passed by congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. In our case, the Principal Agency in this area is the federal Election Commission, which i was a commissioner of some time ago. Commissioner weintraub is now. Essentiallyis evenly balanced between the , not more than their six commissioners, not more than meant three has republicans, three democrats of both major parties. Four votes of the six to adopt regulation or enforce the law. The good news is that no one party has control and can use it against the other party. That was the design. But it requires the commissioners have to be conceded have to be sincere about wanting to do the work because you have to be compromised and agree. What has happened in the last five years ago or so with the current federal Election Commission, which again depends who is on it, is that the 33, 3ion has split republicans and three democrats, on most major votes. An important piece of our system, which is the agency that is supposed to say you have to disclose your funding, you cannot do that, you violated the has not been able to function. There is no policeman on the beat, and the result is that things get wilder and wilder because nobody is there to stop them. That is our structure, in terms of how we get laws, who job,prets them, the fecs and what it does and what it does not. Let me summarize the system that we currently have as part of that structure. Said that there is a limit to how much individuals may contribute to political candidates and political parties. Those limits have been upheld by the Supreme Court, and they are not particularly high. 2600 for an individual giving to a candidate, more if that individual wants to give to a party committee, but not a great deal more. The practical limit of what you can give to the Party Committees , the three Party Committees directly, is going to be about 100,000. A lot of money in any country, but not enormous given what is being spent in our elections. Congress said, and the Supreme Court has agreed so far, that corporations and unions may not give directly to candidates or individuals, only u. S. Citizens and permanent residents, so not foreign governments, foreign countries, foreign individuals. That money is required to be fully disclosed so that every citizen will know who is giving to the candidates and the parties over a very low threshold, 200. Above that, their contributions are going to be disclosed. Though, thethat, u. S. Supreme court said it is permissible to limit how much individuals give directly to candidates and Party Committees, but it is not permissible under our First Amendment right of free speech to limit how much individuals can go out and spend theheir own to advocate election and defeat of a candidate. So you have two different systems here. You have the give money to candidates and parties that can ownimited, spend it on your , go out and take your money by Television Advertisements and save vote for obama, vote for romney, defeat so and so they are terrible, reelect soandso, they have done a great job for our state. That cannot be limited in terms of what individuals spend, and after a case called Citizens United, which you will hear referred to, it cannot be limited as to what corporations and unions can spend very congress had said about 100 years ago corporations and unions cannot spend money in elections. That had been the case in this inntry until Citizens United 2010. So there has been a significant change in our system with the Supreme Court saying that corporations and unions, again, u. S. Corporations and unions, have the same rights as u. S. Individuals to spend unlimited amounts of money. What the Supreme Court said, though, is that that money should be disclosed and is required to be disclosed under the law reads so if i give to a candidate or a party committee, the candidates and Party Committees disclose it. If i as an individual spend the money on my own so i take out an ad that says vote for smith it could say paid for by Trevor Potter, and i would be required to file with the government something that says i took out this ad to reelect smith, and it cost me 2 million. Legal, but i would have to disclose it. Neww development would a development has occurred which sounds confusing, so bear with me instead of my taking out an ad in my own name, paid for by Trevor Potter, or a corporation or a union which, according to the Supreme Court, can now do the same thing doing that and saying paid for by general election by General Electric committees pacs,rmed called super which are political committees that disclose their donors, and they can take all of this corporate and individual money and run the ads in their name prince of the individuals and corporations who have an can putd right to speak their money into a super pac. Ad, and it will say paid for by americans for a better tomorrow. Now, when you watch the ad, you may not know who americans for a better tomorrow is, but it is public information. The press can go to the fec and find out who the donors were, and it can say most of the donors were corporations were labor unions. There is another type of group that is spending money this year. That is called by the press dark money, which means money that is not disclosed as to its source. So those are not super pacs, they are ngos. They are nonprofit organizations that are created by individuals or corporations. Their principal purpose is not supposed to be to engage in politics, because otherwise they would have to file with commissioner one traumas weintraubith commissioner s agency. Their disclosure should be regulated by a different agency, the Internal Revenue service that focuses on taxes. But for a variety of reasons, it is not doing anything about those groups. So we have ended up in a situation which was never envisioned by congress, which passed the laws, and, confusingly, was apparently never envisioned by our Supreme Court when he changed the laws because the Supreme Court said that even though corporations and unions can spend an unlimited amount in elections, it will be disclosed. What happened is that corporations, unions, and individuals who are willing to disclose who they are, give to a super pac, which reports at the federal Election Commission, spends an unlimited amount, and you know who the donors are. If they want to hide who they are, they give to one of these ngos. They are referred to by their designation under the tax code, so you will hear 501 c 4,501 c six, 501 c seven. Do not worry about it. What it is is an organization that spends money in politics and for a variety of reasons that are peculiar to our administrative system, do not have to do not end up disclosing their donors. Now, personally, i think they are required to disclose their donors by law. I think that is what the law says. That is what the Supreme Court said it says. But my friend commissioner weintraubs agency does not have four votes to enforce that law. Now, i will say commissioner weintraub is one of the three votes who has been trying hard to enforce that law, but there is not a majority. So we have a peculiar administrative failure, where an Administrative Agency is not doing its job, and the only way in our system to get it to do its job is to sue it in court. And people who do not like their failure to enforce the law and provide disclosure have sued it in court. But the case is still stuck in court, the agency is still not ordered by a Court Finally to enforce the law, and the result is we have a great deal of money being spent, which commissioner weintraub is going to tell us about, and a lot of it literally hundreds of millions of dollars is not as disk is not disclosed as to the source of the funding. As a result of Citizens United and the introduction of corporate and union money to our elections, we have also a great deal more money being spent in elections than we traditionally historically have, in a system which does not have public funding for house and senate candidates. So the election you are seeing this year is totally privately funded if the money is by , it istes and parties limited and disclosed. If it is by these outside groups which are supposed to be independent of candidates and parties, it may or may not be disclosed, depending on whether it is through a super pac or one of these ngos. Thank you very much. With that, commissioner 112 will tell you how bad the system is in practice, in terms of the amount commissioner weintraub will tell you how bad the system is in practice in terms of the amount spent. Republicans and democrats frequently disagree on issues of Campaign Finance and the First Amendment in this country. However, trevor and i frequently agree. So you are not getting a theesentative sample of debate that usually takes place between democrats and republicans on these issues. Back. To take a step i think there are really important principles at play here. One issue that is really important in this country is that our courts in particular have been extremely protective of the right of every citizen to criticize the government and to do so without fear of any kind of penalty or reprisal. That is a bedrock principle. It is an important principle. And it is important to remember that, because if you watch the tv ads and they are often y and unpleasant to watch i think one has to take a step say, why do we allow this . The court sees this as a form of protecting the rights of citizens to criticize their own government and the candidates and the officeholders. There are different ways one might go about doing that. It is particularly interesting, particularly in international some ofo take a look at the different ways that one could come to these issues. In this country, our courts have very libertarian perspectives. They believe strongly that the best way to encourage the most robust debate on issues of public concerns is by having no that goesspending behind these political ads. That way this side can spend all they want, the other side can spend all they want, and in the end all the issues will be fleshed out and we will have a great, robust debate. That is not the only way one could look at this. If one travel a little bit to the north and i understand we have some canadians in the room their courts believe they are ,rotecting free speech rights they look at it in a different way, and they say when you have no limits, that allows wealthy people to dominate the debate and drown out the voices of others. So the way to protect the most robust debate and make sure that everybody has a chance to get their points across is in fact to have some kind of limit on spending. So you have two countries sidebyside with similar histories and similar legal yet theirs, and courts and laws have evolved in have evolved in very different ways, and there are different conclusions on the regulating of Campaign Finance, money and politics. I agree with what magnus said earlier, that enforcement is a key component of Campaign Finance regulation or any system of Civil Enforcement of laws. If you are going to have laws and nobody is enforcing them, you might as well not have the laws because you are left with a system of allah terry compliant of voluntary compliance, and some people will voluntarily comply. Particularly candidates themselves will be most motivated to comply with the laws because they have a reputation interest at stake. They do not want people out there saying they are lawbreakers because then people will not want to vote for them. But the further you get from the the less that constraint comes to bear. So when you have these groups that are removed from the candidates and are running ads, and it is not transparent who is behind them, no one is really accountable for the message, then you get into some political messaging that is very ugly and very negative and not necessarily reliable in its truthfulness because no one is being held accountable for the message. When we talk about money and politics, the first question Everyone Wants to ask is, how much money is being spent . There is a lot. This year we will probably end up spending close to 4 billion on this election. The president ial election, two years ago, we spent between 6 billion and 7 billion. The 2016 president ial race will undoubtedly be even more expensive. Andle listen to that number it makes headlines, and they think, wow, that sounds like an awful lot of money. In fact, we probably spent more money last week on halloween, a holiday where children dress up in costumes and we hand out candy and we have parties, then the 4 billion we will spend on this election. It is a very large economy. It is a big country with a lot people and economic actors. Much money is how raised and spent, but how is it raised and spent. Is it done in a way that is transparent . Someone accountable for the money that is raised and spent and the messages put out there. When no one is accountable, the message becomes a lot less reliable. Is it done in a way that promotes citizen participation . One of the problems with having all these negative ads out there, which is more likely and more prevalent when we have more independent spenders, when the money gets further from the candidates, is that the voters get turned off. Sometimes they say that they are just not interested in participating. Are less interested in participating because they see the wealthy donors are giving so much. Why should i give 25 when there is a billionaire out there who is giving 25 million . What is my 25 going to do . These say i see all negative ads and i think i do not want to vote for any of these candidates. So i think there is that negative ramification that can discourage participation. The bottomline concern is, is this money being raised and spent in a way that is legal, that is not corrupting of the entire process . I think there are a lot of people in this country who have concerns about that. That the 33 splits that trevor alluded to on our commission they are prevalent, but it does not work the way you think it might work. It is not a question of the three democrats protecting democrats and the three republicans protecting republicans in enforcement matters. There is an ideological divide on the commission that the republicans on the commission believes in this more libertarian view. They believe that the First Amendment protects all this money that is being raised and spent and that we should not be regulating it. The democrats believe that there are laws on the books particularly laws about disclosure that have been upheld, that should be given force. We should investigate groups that appear to be engaged in political activity and are not registering as political committees. Although it sounds like a partisan dispute, it is really more of an ideological dispute about how the laws should function in terms of regulating politics. Now, why does it matter who is behind these ads . As i said, part of it goes to how credible they are. Part of the rationale for disclosure goes to what information the voters come away with. I will tell you a story. In my own home state of maryland , in the last election we had a ballot aboutur whether to allow casino gambling in our state. This is something that is decided by state law on a statebystate basis. There are as that started to be run about this from various officeholders that said yes, this will bring money into the state, it will be good for economic to bellman, we will have more money for education, it will be good for economic development, we will have more money for education. Then an ad said, paid for by a committee, vote no on 6, or whatever number it was. There is no way of knowing that this money is going to Fund Education reform, and it will be a big of a way to the casino interests, so do not support this. Because we have good disclosure rules, it it came out that the sole funder behind the ads saying vote no was a competing casino in the next state of west virginia. They did not want the competition from maryland casinos, so they wanted us to vote against it. That affected how i view those ads and how i assessed what was going on in those ads. These were not people who really cared about the education of the children of maryland, they just wanted to protect their profits in west virginia. When the initiative passed, they came to maryland and filed a licensed application to try to open a casino in maryland. I think it is really important, hasthe Supreme Court recognized this, that voters know who is behind these ads. What we have is a system where and it changes from one election to the next, it changes as we go along but increasingly since 2010 we have a system where more money is raised from fewer donors and. Ith less disclosure in the top 10 senate races in this country, because we do not have the president on the ballot, so the senate is where a lot of attention is being focused. The senate may change in control ,rom democrat to republican depending on how the votes go tomorrow. In the top 10 races, most of them, there is more money, by a long shot, being spent by outside groups than the candidates themselves. The most expensive race, in North Carolina which is not a big state, is not inexpensive media market, but it is the most expensive race so far. As of last week, over 112 million was spent in that one millionf which over 80 came from outside spending groups. The candidates are taking on a smaller and smaller role in their own campaigns. Now, some of these spending groups are run by friends and associates of the candidates. And are funded by the same donors who support the campaigns. Sometimes they are supported by family members of the candidates. Yet these groups claim that they are independent of the candidates. Ce ofis issue of independen Campaign Spending by outside groups has become very contingents has become very contentious. Beyond that so we have the candidates and the Party Committees that are very transparent and that function under contribution limits and file disclosure reports with us that tell everyone, every donor of over 200 and every expenditure of over 200. They are very detailed reports. Then there is another category of the super pacs that trevor described. These are political committees, and they do file reports with us not as frequently as the candidates do and there is an article in todays paper about groups that have manipulated the they held offt their donors until after the last report was due before the election. As of october 15, that was the last reporting period for the , and all of a sudden we are seeing a flood of ads by this by these groups. One wonders how they can afford this, because in the last report they did not have much money, but obviously they are asking their donors to not transmit the money until after the reporting period. So there will be a flood of advertising and nobody knows who is paying for it. In the last week, the money has groupsming from outside on the order of 20 million a day. Then there are groups that do not disclose at all, and we will eventually see the ads and we will be able to know from forms filed with the federal Communications Commission yet another commission in the federal government how much money was spent on ads. But we will not necessarily see all of the money that is spent by these groups. Some of it will go to reaching out to voters and trying to bring them to the polls. There is a whole infrastructure that has developed by these groups that shadows the party organization. There are billionaires who are basically creating their own little Party Organizations that are mimicking what the parties do, except in a much less transparent way. How much moneyow is being spent on those endeavors and where that money came from. Problem in me, is a our democracy, when we are moving away from disclosure because i think the voters have the right to know who is supporting the candidates. And the candidates need to be accountable for their own supporters. So we are moving towards a less transparent system, and also a system that is empowering more very wealthy people. We are seeing fewer donors, more money but fewer donors. Because, as i said, some of the smaller donors are feeling less encouraged to contribute when they see how much money is flowing, and a lot of the big donors are giving a lot of money. We are talking of we are talking about tens of millions, and in some cases billions of dollars from individuals. Going back to whether this is a corrupting process, i think one has to ask, what will those donors expected return for those massive contributions . That is kind of where we are today and what some of my concerns are as someone who tries to enforce the law. Thank you very much. We are grateful to both presenters. We will open the floor for questions, comments. If you could raise your hand so that we can give you a microphone. If you could please introduce affiliation,your and if you can keep the questions and comments very brief, that would be great so that many people can speak. Yes, sir . Arabic. K in excuse me. [speaking arabic] this is impossible as i get it from the presenter. Why the members of this commission are not independent who do not belong to either democrats or republicans . Is there a penalty that will be imposed on those who are using the political money in a wrong manner, and has the commission the right to regulate the political money . Thank you for listening. Language]ng native a Political Party where will they get the money from . Cannot bempaigning separated from money. What kind of violation has been financing . Paign how did you resolve that . Lets take one more before we head over. Language]ng native i am from haiti, and i would a little much to learn more about the financing of elections. I have heard it said that in they do not have Public Financing available to them. U. S. Public members, do you have funds . Are you a source of funding at all . Without public funding, how does that happen, i am wondering backup thank you. Thank you very much. We have questions about appointing commissioners for the fec. Would it be would it not be better to have independents . About thef Words International funding system. Sure. Let me start with your question about where the appointees to the federal Election Commission come from. Like Everything Else in our system, it is a result of , as laide compromise out by our constitution. Officials of the government entities, entities like the federal Election Commission, are called independent, but they are really people who have to be nominated by the president , so selected by the president , and then approved, confirmed by the senate. So you have a compromise between the president and the senate. In reality, what has happened for the entire existence of the commission, is that the party picksas the presidency its people, and the other party, which is represented in congress by leaders of that party, choose their people. Even though they are all hnically and president ial even though they are all technically a president ial nomination, if the president tries to nominate someone for one of the other party seats without their consent, the senate will not confirm them. So you have a compromise, as it has developed, and you end up in the current world with the democrats being appointed by the president , conferring with his party, and the republicans being selected by the republican , and then congress the president officially nominates them, and both are confirmed together. I think i am right in saying that there have only been two commissioners confirmed in the last six years. The others were appointed before this presidency because there has been no agreement between the parties, another area where we have deadlocked. There have been no new commissioners. And the ones like commissioner weintraub, who were there before, remain there because nobody has been successfully appointed to replace them. It is the closest thing to perpetual life that we have in our government. [laughter] trevor, if you had not left of your own accord, you probably would still be there. Trevor is exactly right. I was appointed by president bush, a republican, although i am a democrat. I was recommended to the president by the Democratic Senate leaders at the time, and that is typical. If i could just say we should have some sort of an independent commission. That is clear. Other countries do. Our norms have not come up our norms have not caught up with that. Of whold have questions selects someone who is truly independent . Is current deadlocked system creating a serious problem. We do have one commissioner now who is an independent. He is a person of no party. He is not democrat or republican, but he was selected to fill a democratic seat and he generally votes the same way as the two democratic commissioners, the cause that is what he believes is the right thing to do. It is complicated. It was set up to be a Bipartisan Commission so that one party at one point, and and at various points in its history, it has worked better than it is working today. It last five or six years, has not been working very well together. There has not been a lot of common ground, a lot of meeting in the middle. But in the early part of my tenure, we did a much better job of that. I hold out hope that that could happen again. Financing is largely private in this country. We have a system of Public Financing only for the president ial race, not for the house or the senate. Various states may have their own system of financing, but they are statelevel elections. But at the federal level, there financing,vate except for the presidency. The way our Supreme Court interpreted that law that allowed Public Financing, they said it could not be required. So it is a voluntary system. The way the system is set up, if one accepts the public funds, one also has to accept expenditure limits. What has happened over the last number of years, really since 2000, is that it has become clear that even that candidates even under contribution limits have been able to raise so much more money than the expenditure limits would allow them to spend if they took the public money, that they do not participate. So the system needs to be amended. There are bills in congress to fix it, but they are not going anywhere. I think there was a question about enforcement. Yes, the commission has the authority to impose penalties or at most of what we do is to enter into negotiations and try to come to a Settlement Agreement once we agree there is a violation, but the problem of late has been getting to that the violation is a law. We have several hands in the air. This is what happens when you talk about Campaign Finance. You simply run out of time. People are waiting at the back of the room. To respect the agenda, we will have to continue the discussion during the break. We will try to grab our two presenters before they leave the building. Sat that trevor and ellen and i sat in this particular trevor and ellen and i sat in this particular situation. 2016 election as well, which is when we will be electing a new president. Two things that i heard things are getting wilder and while there and more money is being raised from fewer donors with less disclosure. There is a lot of work still to be done. On behalf of myself, i want to thank Trevor Potter and ellen weintraub. I want to thank all of you for your participation. If you are interested in Campaign Finance, please grab me at any point during this event. We will take a break and we will reconvene at 4 00 in this room for a session entitled, more , for theore people americans with disabilities act and expanding political rights. Thank you very much. [applause] at cspan. Org, you can see debate and adds for races around the country. One of the races we are watching is the Louisiana Senate race billen Mary Landrieu and cassidy and robert maness. Here is a look at the ads running in that race. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. He promised to change america, but he is changing it for the worse, and Mary Landrieu goes right around and Mary Landrieu goes votes right along with it. Bill cassidy stands up to barack obama because he represents you. I am dr. Bill cassidy, and i approved this message. I am a registered nurse who built nursing businesses in 12 states. We treat far too many women who are victims of domestic violence. That is why i will never understand why congressman hill cassidy voted against the act for victims of domestic violence. I am Mary Landrieu and i approved this message because i will always stand up for the women of louisiana. Senator Mary Landrieu, i voted for you before, but when you voted for obama care, i knew i had made a mistake. Canceled health plans, big rate increases, and you need to repeal it. You scare us with nonsense about medicare and veterans. Bill cassidy stands up for votek obama, and he will to repeal obama care. I am with you and i am fighting for you. I am Mary Landrieu, and i approved this message. We have all built companies that employee thousands of louisiana ands. Landrieu, of mary louisiana got millions. And to rebuild after katrina. President to get that done. Now she is chairman of the energy committee. We cannot afford to lose that. That is why we are all with mary. I am robert maness. Here in louisiana, you learn to be tough. One moment of weakness, and alligator will eat you alive. When i get to washington, i will stand up for the big spenders. I will fight to repeal obama care and protect our gun rights. I am robert maness, and i approved this message because louisiana needs a senator who will stand up to the current politicians and the alligators. Today, chief of Naval Operations admiral jonathan will be live from the Brookings Institution starting at 9 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan3. At 9 30, secretary of state john kerry talks on u. S. China relations. At the Johns Hopkins school of advanced american of advanced international studies. Canhe 2015 cspan Student Competition is underway. The theme is the three branches and you, showing how the three branches have affected you or your community. There are 200 cash prices for students and there are 200 cash prizes for students and teachers. Go to student can. Org. Washington journal is next, live with your phone calls. At 2 00 p. M. Eastern, a discussion of the development of the hiv vaccine. Tonight at 8 00, we bring you live election results. In 45 minutes, Nathan Gonzales of the rothenberg political report offers protections for the midterm elections. Taylor a. M. , jessica from the hill newspaper, arun blake of the washington post, and mary sabato from the university of virginia. Today, decisions will be made on all 435 house seats. An estimated 4 billion spent on this campaign. Much of that tilted toward senate races. Republicans need succeeds to gain control of the senate. Need six seats. Website for more information. Our first 45 minutes this morning, as we talk to you about elections on this election
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