Foreign money from dark sources may be entering into political campaigns thanks to lax laws and enforcement. Thanks to Election Law Blog for a posting titled, “FEC Commissioner Weintraub Pushes Again for FEC to Consider Foreign Money Issue”. The Federal Election Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub’s letter to the FEC was titled, “Discussion of Commission’s Response to Alleged Foreign Interference in American Elections”. Take a look at this excerpt:

The mere allegation that foreign interference may have occurred shakes the faith of Americans in our democracy. The FEC must find out the facts of what happened during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and move swiftly and firmly to fix any problems we find. Only then can we begin to restore the American people’s resilient but battered faith that our federal elections belong to us – and not to some foreign power.

Since I last broached the issue of foreign money in our elections at the Commission’s January 12, 2017, meeting, the Commission and the American public have learned quite a bit about the possible scope of foreign intrusions into the 2016 presidential election. Just last week, Bloomberg News reported the shocking news that Russia had made incursions into voter databases and software systems in 39 states. TIME reported in May that American intelligence officials have found that Russian agents bought ads on Facebook to target specific American populations with election-related propaganda. The Intercept reported earlier this month that “Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election.”

The organization CREDO Action has gathered 160,457 signatures for a petition on this subject with the following text:

The Federal Election Commission has the power and obligation to monitor and enforce the Federal Election Campaign Act. It must thoroughly investigate not only Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election but potential collusion by the Trump campaign.

According to their website:

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is the independent regulatory agency charged with administering and enforcing the federal campaign finance law. The FEC has jurisdiction over the financing of campaigns for the U.S. House, Senate, Presidency and the Vice Presidency.

Their mission is “to protect the integrity of the federal campaign finance process by providing transparency and fairly enforcing and administering federal campaign finance laws”.