Countries around the world are struggling with the same dilemma of effectively regulating the flow of money into politics, a new report finds. Since Global Integrity started this tracking in 2004, political financing has remained the weakest-rated component of countries’ anti-corruption framework. Out of the 31 countries in the study, 29 failed (scored less than 60 out of 100) to regulate donations to political campaigns.
Update to original article: On April 11, 2012 Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) reiterated their call on President Obama to fix the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by appointing new commissioners. The President had promised to respond to any petition on the ‘We the People’ section of the White House website with at least 25,000 signatures. More than 27,000 Americans signed the petition calling on the president to nominate new FEC commissioners. But from the White House, there has been only silence. Despite the fact that the existing campaign finance system is fatally flawed, a gesture of minimal integrity would be to at least enforce those existing laws. This blatant choice to not even respond to the public outcry, much less actually appoint regulators to the FEC, makes it clear to all that both political parties have become equally entrenched in this wild west lawlessness of campaign financing.
