FEC Inaction Betrays its Mission, Leaves Elections Vulnerable

At its open meeting today the Federal Election Commission(FEC) will present a “compromise” proposal that effectively dismisses Public Citizen’s request for rulemaking originally submitted in May of 2023.

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:

“With deepfakes impacting elections around the world and increasingly popping up in the U.S. election cycle, the FEC should be working actively to deter deceptive political deepfakes. Instead, the FEC has punted on a simple request to issue a common sense rule clarifying that existing law prohibits the use of fraudulent deepfakes, period.

"We need a clear FEC rule in place to deter fast-proliferating political deepfakes, which threaten electoral integrity and people’s basic faith that what they see and hear is real – but the agency has utterly failed to deliver.

"It’s a misnomer that the FEC has adopted a compromise position. What it actually has done is adopt a compromised position, one that fails to uphold electoral integrity. In the best case, the FCC’s inaction will spread public cynicism. In the worst case, it invites electoral chaos."

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, added:

“Today’s dismissal is extremely disappointing, not only because the FEC has refused to issue a simple rule clarifying that existing law to the use of fraudulent deepfakes — but because it has taken the Commission over a year of inaction to get to this point.

“A single credible deepfake has the power to irreparably damage our elections and our democracy. That the FEC has chosen a wait-and-see approach at such a critical moment for action is both spineless and shameful.

"While refusing to act on our petition, the agency did seize this moment to reaffirm that fraudulent election material is unacceptable when created by any medium, including AI. This is not action. And it is not enough. The threat of deep fakes is staring us in the face and unfortunately our elections agency has chosen to look the other way."