{"id":19016,"date":"2019-08-26T21:29:52","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T04:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=19016"},"modified":"2019-08-26T21:29:52","modified_gmt":"2019-08-27T04:29:52","slug":"fec-vice-chair-resigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=19016","title":{"rendered":"FEC vice chair resigns"},"content":{"rendered":"

The vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) submitted\u00a0his resignation letter<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0President Trump<\/a>\u00a0on Monday, leaving the agency without the necessary number of commissioners to vote on proposed actions.<\/p>\n

Matthew Petersen, a Republican who has served as a commissioner since 2008, wrote that he will formally step down on Aug. 31.<\/p>\n

“Throughout my service, I have faithfully discharged my duty to enforce the law in a manner that respects free speech rights, while also fairly interpreting the relevant statutes and regulations and providing meaningful notice to those subject to FEC jurisdiction,” Petersen wrote. “I am honored to have served the American people in this capacity and to have fulfilled the oath taken 11 years ago.”<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the FEC confirmed Petersen’s resignation, declining to comment further.<\/p>\n

His departure leaves the agency with only three of the four members required to vote on proposed actions.<\/p>\n

“By law, no more than three Commissioners can represent the same political party, and at least four votes are required for any official Commission action,” the FEC wrote on its website. “This structure was created to encourage nonpartisan decisions.”<\/p>\n

The remaining commissioners are Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat; Commissioner Caroline Hunter, a Republican; and Commissioner Steven Walther, an independent. President Trump nominated Republican attorney Trey Trainor to serve as an FEC commissioner in 2017, but the Senate has not voted on his nomination.<\/p>\n

The cyber angle:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Petersen was heavily involved in technology issues, which he highlighted in his resignation letter.<\/p>\n

Also in July, Petersen joined the other FEC commissioners in voting unanimously to allow federal political campaigns to accept discounted cybsersecurity services from Area 1 Security, a California-based company. He also voted last year in favor of allowing federal campaigns and national parties to accept a package of “enhanced online account security features” from Microsoft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The vice chairman of the Federal...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19018,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19016\/revisions\/19018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}