Vote 2020 buttons.

Disclosures from the Mueller investigation and the Trump impeachment trial probably have made most Americans aware and perhaps even alarmed over the growth of unregulated Wild West election and campaign finance practices that seriously threaten the integrity of American elections.

Here is just a sample of the upheavals in campaign practices that Americans may now be questioning:

• Following the Trump impeachment verdict, is opposition research "dirt" solicited by a candidate from a foreign government still actually a "thing of value" and therefore illegal?

• How should election laws account for online political ads now that Facebook has declined to follow Twitter in not running paid political ads in 2020?

• How should election laws be enforced against the swarm of foreign "bots" and Russian dark sites that U.S. intelligence agencies have warned are looking to sway the 2020 U.S. election?

• How does such huge amounts of foreign funding get funneled into U.S. campaigns, i.e. the federal indictments of Rudy Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman?

• What is the connection between political corruption and campaign finance lawbreaking as evidenced by the federal convictions of Paul Manafort for bank fraud, Michael Cohen for mistress cover-up payoffs, and Roger Stone for lying to Congress?

• What new campaign finance loopholes are being opened by such practices as a foreign national spending $200,000 to attend the Trump inaugural; or the Republican National Committee making bulk purchases of thousands of copies of a partisan diatribe "book" by Don Trump, Jr.; or former Rep. Duncan Hunter's attempt to claim airfare for a pet rabbit as a campaign expenditure?

• Will shareholders lose their ability to oppose corporate "dark money" expenditures under new Trump administration proposed rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission?

Our concern is that while many Americans may be aware of this expanding array of unethical, suspicious, undemocratic and perhaps even illegal campaign practices, few Americans know that the Federal Election Commission — the principal federal agency tasked with the interpretation, oversight, and enforcement of campaign finance and election laws — is now defunct and incapable of functioning because it does not have enough confirmed members to constitute a working quorum.

The six-member FEC has a legal requirement of four voting members to decide enforcement cases, pass interpretive rules, issue advisory opinions, punish candidates and undertake key litigation. Fortunately, lower-level staff work continues, and candidate financial reports are being collected and publicized. But since August 2019, the Commission has been left with only three confirmed members. A Democratic member departed in April 2017, a Republican member departed in February 2018, and another Republican member departed in August 2019. None have been replaced.

We call for the restoration of a full meeting quorum at the FEC to enable this regulatory agency to perform its essential range of police functions to guard against the new and unprecedented threats to fair elections whether from cyber attacks or Super PACS. In the face of warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies and the FBI that Russia and other hostile powers are planning to disrupt the 2020 national election, it is irresponsible not to remove the handcuffs on the FEC's ability to operate.

The new FEC appointments should include a bipartisan array of commissioners committed to upholding the integrity of election and campaign finance laws. The agency is prohibited by law from having more than three commissioners from the same political party. The failures of the Trump administration to nominate and of the Republican-led U.S. Senate to confirm FEC nominees have rendered the FEC dysfunctional, but we are wary that the same outcome could result from packing the FEC with conspiratorialists or extremists out to destroy the FEC's system of campaign regulation as a manifestation of the "Deep State."

There are only nine months left until the 2020 election. Hostile foreign powers, corrupt special interests, and dark money spenders appear to be ready. On behalf of the American electorate, the FEC must be made ready as well.