Spouses (and other family members) could once labor for their candidate’s committee, for pay, if their services were fairly valued and compensated by market standards.  Now the House, reacting to highly publicized allegations of excess, has imposed a blanket prohibition of paying the spouse for these services, and it has also included a requirement that the candidates report any compensation of other family members.  

The bill has been fashioned with interesting features and it was changed on notable points from the version originally introduced. It may influence, beyond the immediate issue addressed, the development of the law on Leadership PACs and on candidates’ personal liability for campaign finance law violations.

On Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act (HR 1281) in a bi-partisan voice vote. The bill would make it a federal crime to knowingly provide false information with the intent to disenfranchise another person in a federal election. Violators would be subject to five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000.

The bill would have limited the time frame for infraction to 60 days preceding a federal election. A committee amendment offered by ranking member Lamar Smith (R-TX) made deceptive practices punishable year-round. Under the bill, the Attorney General would be required to establish a Voting Integrity Task Force within the Justice Department to “undertake all effective measures necessary to provide correct information to voters” and refer matters to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division for prosecution.

The legislation was initially introduced in the Senate in the last session by Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), who has a similar bill pending in this session. The Senate bill, unlike the House version has a provision that would allow private parties, rather than just the Justice Department, to bring lawsuits in order to block deceptive practices during an election campaign.

Play The ReDistricting Game! 

U.S. Reps. John Tanner (D-TN), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Zach Wamp (R-TN) today asked the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on Congressional redistricting reform.

Tanner and Wamp have introduced the Fairness and Independence in Redistricting Act (H.R. 543), and Congresswoman Lofgren has introduced the Redistricting Reform Act of 2007 (H.R. 2248). Both bills would create independent commissions in each state to conduct redistricting and would ban mid-decade redistricting.

The text of their letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith follows:

After years of painstaking lobbying, e-mail and phone campaigns, congressional hearings, and committee markups and amendments, Rep. Rush Holt's Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act finally appears poised for a floor vote in the House of Representatives. With an impressive 216 bipartisan co-sponsors, the bill has a real chance of passing. If signed into law, HR 811 would dramatically improve the electoral process in both the short and long term. While it would not solve the immense shortcomings in the current system, HR 811 would take a giant step towards returning much-needed transparency and accountability to the process.

Not unexpectedly, now that the bill has gained traction in the 110th Congress, critics have descended onto the bill with a fury, complaining that it is too weak or too strong, that its deadlines are too ambitious or too distant, that it takes too much autonomy away from the states or not enough.

HR 811 is not perfect. Few bills are. And honest debate about a matter as important as election integrity is always helpful to the process. However, much of the ostensibly pro-transparency criticism of HR 811 has sadly taken a detour away from being useful and descended into hyperbole, fear-mongering, and uninformed posturing. Returning to the substance of the bill and its actual consequences is long overdue.