Reform Groups Urge Reid to Ensure Separate Confirmation Votes for Four FEC Nominees

Reform Groups Urge Senate Majority Leader Reid to Ensure Separate Senate Confirmation Votes for Four FEC Nominees
Monday, October 01, 2007
http://www.democracy21.org/index.asp?Type=B_PR&SEC={91FCB139-CC82-4DDD-AE4E-3A81E6427C7F}&DE={488AD96B-0316-4362-BFAB-DBDBD91498E7}


Reform groups sent a letter today to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), urging the Senate Majority Leader ''to take the steps necessary to ensure that separate votes are held in the Senate on the nominations of Robert Lenhard, David Mason, Hans von Spakovsky and Steven Walther to serve as Commissioners on the Federal Election Commission.''

The reform groups include the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters, Public Citizen and U.S. PIRG.

According to the letter, ''As you know, the pending FEC appointments include a controversial nomination. It appears that efforts are being made to bypass the normal process used to confirm Presidential appointments in order to ensure this controversial nominee's confirmation by packaging him with the other FEC nominees to have just one vote on all four of the nominees together, thereby evading a specific vote on the controversial nominee.''

The letter states, ''As far as we can see, the only reason for forcing the Senate to take a single bloc vote on the four pending FEC nominees appears to be to prevent a majority of the Senators from voting to reject one of the nominees. ......