One of the biggest open secrets in Washington is that the agency that's supposed to oversee and enforce the campaign finance laws -- the Federal Election Commission -- is notoriously ineffective. In fact, it was designed that way.

When Congress created the FEC after the Watergate scandal, it set up an agency whose primary mission was to monitor the behavior of the lawmakers themselves. They certainly knew that, so they took pains to make sure the campaign watchdog would have a very tight leash indeed.

First off, they set up the commission as a six-member body. Because that's an even number, no ruling can go into effect unless it gets at least 4 votes -- which is often impossible because the FEC six members consist of three Democrats and three Republicans, nominated by their respective parties.

Tie votes -- which mean no action can be taken -- are commonplace at the agency on some of the most important issues. Thus the campaign finance system is riddled with loopholes. "Soft money" -- contributions to political parties from otherwise prohibited sources such as corporations, unions and other groups -- was one such loophole that persisted for years until it was finally closed in 2002 by an act of Congress.

Because of this, and because the agency often takes years to resolve complaints, political operatives have learned they can live on the edge of the law with little fear of interference from the FEC.

Show me the paper

The one exception to the FEC's reputation as an ineffective agency is the work it's done to improve disclosure of campaign contributions. From its earliest days, when the public records room was filled with microfiche readers and the clackety-clack of dot matrix printers, the agency has made great strides in making the information filed by candidates available to the public at large, as well as to groups -- like the Center for Responsive Politics -- that use the data to produce easy-to-understand charts and tables on the web.

Yet even there, Congress has thrown up roadblocks. In this age of computers, the Internet, and instant information, the U.S. Senate has effectively exempted itself from the rule that requires every other federal office to file their campaign finance reports by computer.

Republican senators have regularly used arcane procedural rules to stop proposals to require that senators also file electronically. So unlike everyone else, senators and Senate candidates file their reports on paper -- computer printouts, actually. The FEC then hires an outside contractor to re-type all those printouts back into the computer. The bottom line: during the busy fall campaign season, it typically takes about six weeks for the Senate's contribution data to reach the web where the public can see it. The cost to taxpayers for this re-typing of computer data is around $100,000 every election year.