Proposed Statement of Policy Regarding Treasurer's Best Efforts To Obtain, Maintain, and Submit Information as Required by the Federal Election Campaign Act

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The Federal Election Commission (the "Commission") seeks comments on a proposal to clarify its enforcement policy with respect to the circumstances under which it intends to consider a political committee and its treasurer to be in compliance with the recordkeeping and reporting requirements of the Federal Election Campaign Act, as amended ("FECA"), based on the "best efforts" defense. Section 432(i) of Title 2 provides that when the treasurer of a political committee demonstrates that best efforts were used to obtain, maintain, and submit the information required by FECA, any report or any records of such committee shall be considered in compliance with FECA (and/or chapters 95 and 96 of Title 26). In the past, the Commission has interpreted this section to apply only to a treasurer's efforts to obtain required information from contributors to a political committee, and not to maintaining information or the submission of reports. However, in light of Lovely v. Federal Election Commission, 307 F. Supp. 2d 294 (D. Mass. 2004), the Commission intends to apply Section 432(i) to obtaining, maintaining, and submitting information and records to the Commission for the purpose of complyin