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Commissioner Smith’s letter replying to a letter from Trevor Potter ran in today’s Roll Call, but I understand it is not available electronically. Here is the text of it for interested readers:

Trevor Potter asserts that we should not worry about the complexity of campaign finance laws, because “they are well worth whatever inconvenience and lawyers’ fees they may generate” (”In Campaign Law, ‘Less’ is Not Always More,” June 9). After all, “corporate leaders rightly find anti-trust laws complicated,” and “patent law may be puzzling to the biologist.”

Such comparisons obscure the real burden campaign finance regulation places on grass-roots political activity. “Corporate leaders” have the financial resources to hire high-priced lawyers, accountants, managers and consultants. The volunteer activists who chair most local political party committees around the country do not. Patent laws are written to enhance the value of discoveries, not to limit inventors’ activities, and most biologists have the support of large research universities or corporations to handle legal issues. The typical campaign volunteer does not have such resources, and would not volunteer if he or she believed it would be necessary to hire a lawyer.

Unfortunately, far too often it is necessary for the typical volunteer to hire a lawyer. Most cases we see at the Federal Election Commission do not involve political “corruption” of any kind, or even “the appearance of corruption,” but are merely inadvertent violations of the law, usually by overly exuberant volunteers or overwhelmed, low-paid staffers.

At the FEC, I keep a file of correspondence we receive from average citizens who have been crunched by campaign finance “reform.” Here are excerpts from a typical letter, whose author was fined $2,700 by the FEC: “I was a novice with no prior campaign experience whatsoever. I only volunteered to help [the candidate] since [sic] he and I had previously been co-workers. I thought that I possessed average intelligence and somewhat above average computer skills and offered my help. … I simply misunderstood that ‘common sense’ could not be applied. … I can state with all certainty that I will NEVER be involved with a political campaign again. I will leave that to paid professionals.”

This is from a volunteer campaign treasurer, a certified public accountant no less: “For what it is worth, I will never be acting as treasurer again. It is clear from the complexity of the rules, the quantity of literature sent and expected to be read and understood in entirety, and the size of the penalties, it could never be intended that anyone other than a specialist act as treasurer in a campaign.”

Reviewing these letters from ordinary citizen volunteers who have done nothing more than help a political candidate they believed in, I find Potter’s assertions not only wrong, but callous.

It may be true that for Potter’s client, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and other powerful Washington insiders and career politicians, the complexity of the law is “worth the inconvenience.” For far too many citizen volunteers, however, “inconvenience” is a poor choice of words