The next presidential election is 14 months away, and the agency tasked with enforcing campaign-finance laws is all but going out of business.

The Federal Election Commission is supposed to have six members, but next month it will drop down to three -- one short of the number needed for a quorum.

As a result, The Center for Public Integrity reported this week, “for now the FEC can’t conduct meetings. It can’t slap political scofflaws with fines. It can’t make rules. It can’t conduct audits and approve them. It can’t vote on the outcome of investigations.”

The reason the FEC is facing this paralysis: Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

For decades McConnell has opposed bipartisan campaign-finance laws, even taking his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.

“He is one of the only politicians in the country who says there should be more money in politics, not less,” NPR producer Tom Dreisbach once stated in an on-air report.

And so, argue McConnell’s critics, the Kentucky senator has made a point of undercutting the FEC.

The commission is supposed to be independent and bipartisan, with members serving staggered 6-year terms. Each member is appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. News aggregation site Front Page Live pointed out this week that McConnell has “blocked ... the confirmation of new members to the Federal Election Commission” ever since assuming the Senate majority leader role in 2015, including stopping a nominee put forward by President Donald Trump in 2017. (He also has refused to allow the Senate to vote on bipartisan election-security bills meant to prevent Russia from continuing to successfully interfere with U.S. elections, earning him the derogatory nickname “Moscow Mitch.”)

McConnell’s obstruction of the Federal Election Commission confirmation process has gone on for four years and has now effectively shut down the agency.

To be sure, the FEC wasn’t working very well even when it had a quorum. Earlier this month, chairwoman Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat, accused Republicans on the commission of “obstructing campaign-finance law enforcement” by blocking the agency from obtaining evidence about reports that Russian agents “had illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help then-candidate Donald Trump win the presidency.”

BREAKING: @FEC's Republicans block all investigation of & enforcement against Russians Torshin & Butina re the NRA & the 2016 presidential election.



Result: FEC does nothing to find out the truth behind one of the most blockbuster campaign finance allegations in recent memory. pic.twitter.com/KgrJLJTuZY — Ellen L Weintraub (@EllenLWeintraub) August 16, 2019

Republican commissioner Caroline Hunter responded forcefully to Weintraub, stating that “the FEC is forbidden from investigating groups purely based on rank speculation.” She insisted Weintraub’s allegation was “long on conjecture and short on the evidence and the law.”

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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