The FEC Needs Four Commissioners to Fine Anyone. It Has Two.

The Federal Election Campaign Act gives the Federal Election Commission six seats and requires four affirmative votes to open an investigation, approve a fine, or defend the agency in court.▸ It has not had four commissioners since April 30, 2025, when Commissioner Allen Dickerson's term expired. It has not had three since October 3, 2025, when Commissioner James "Trey" Trainor resigned. For the entirety of fiscal year 2026 so far, the agency built to police money in American elections has been run by two people — Shana Broussard and Dara Lindenbaum — who cannot legally act on most of what crosses their desks.

The FEC itself has put this on the record in federal court.▸ Responding to a lawsuit accusing it of illegally sitting on a complaint, the agency filed a Notice of Lack of Quorum in Senate Majority PAC v. FEC (D.D.C. No. 26-336) stating plainly that, "as of May 1, 2025, the Commission is without a quorum and unable to authorize defense of this action." The filing lays out the math: six seats by statute, three commissioners after Dickerson's departure, two after Trainor's. President Trump nominated two replacements, Ashley Stow and Andrew Woodson, on February 11, 2026 — but as of the notice's filing date, April 6, 2026, the Senate had not confirmed either one, and it still had not as of this writing. The FEC's own FY2026 Management and Performance Challenges report — written by the agency about itself — calls the loss of quorum its top challenge and warns that "it is unavoidable that pressing issues will soon arise that require Commission action" that two commissioners cannot supply.

With only two commissioners, the FEC also lost bipartisan cover: agency rules let remaining commissioners act on a narrow list of matters during a quorum lapse only if Democrats and Republicans are both still represented.▸ Broussard and Lindenbaum are both Democrats. Almost everything with any teeth — fines, investigations, litigation, advisory opinions — is frozen.

Every fiscal year on record collected six or seven figures in penalties — from $533,399 in FY2024 to $2.1 million in FY2019.▸ FY2026 is different not because the number is small, but because it is exactly zero, confirmed independently by the agency's own first- and second-quarter memos covering October 2025 through March 2026. Zero cases closed with a penalty in either quarter, because zero penalties can be voted on by two people.

The FEC's quarterly "Status of Enforcement" memos track a specific number: how many open matters have gone more than a year without a Commission vote of any kind — not closed, not dismissed, not advanced, just sitting.▸ That count has climbed every quarter the Commission has lacked a quorum:

Chairwoman Shana Broussard has confirmed the trajectory publicly: as reported by NOTUS in March 2026, she said the agency had 190 total pending matters as of December 2025 and 195 by the time of that report — a count that, per the FEC's own Q2 filing, has since grown to 253 open cases, 137 of them sitting with reports pending before the Commission itself.▸ Some of the stalled investigations date back to 2022 and 2023, and campaign-finance complaints carry a five-year statute of limitations — meaning matters can now age out of the FEC's reach entirely before two commissioners are ever joined by a third or fourth.

Figures cover the FEC's formal enforcement docket (MURs) specifically — not the separate, still-functioning Administrative Fine Program for late or non-filed reports, which the agency says it can continue to run during a quorum lapse.