The Federal Election Commission staggered into the nebulous world of Internet politics for the first time on Thursday, and cluelessly stumbled out.
The six-member FEC's most significant act during a daylong discussion in Washington: to ask for the public's opinion on what rules and regulations ought to govern political campaigns on the Web.
The issues are complex because political campaigns are becoming more Web-dependent. Yet the stringent regulations that apply to traditional media campaigns are essentially obsolete in new media.
"We have to gear some regulations and rules of the road to an entity that was not even thought of when the FEC was devised," said FEC spokesman Ron Harris. "As with any new frontier, it's going to be difficult."
And so the commission responded to concerns from two campaign Web sites, one from Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush, and the other from a nonpartisan political information organization.
Bush's people asked whether the FEC would count independent Web sites supporting his candidacy as contributions to the Texas governor's presidential campaign.
Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said they wanted to know if such Web sites would fall under the rule of independent expenditure -- does the independent site have to report the cost of the Web site to the FEC?
"It has to do with everything from email to links to volunteer sites in general," McClellan said. "What are those rules governing that? These are volunteer sites, so do we have to do anything related to these sites?"
Bush also asked the commission to look at whether it's acceptable for an unrelated political Web site to use graphics and pictures gleaned from an official Web site.
"We wanted to know if the things that they were doing violated FEC laws," McClellan said. "We asked (the FEC) to look at it these issues because they haven't been addressed."
The FEC is considering a staff proposal that would exempt campaigns from reporting outside Web site links to the candidate's site if the link originated from outside the campaign and from a separate computer system.
(This is not Bush's first experience with the FEC. In May, he asked the FEC to crack down on a satirical Web site gwbush.com.)
On Thursday, the FEC also discussed whether the Democracy Network, an election information Web site supported by the League of Women Voters, was violating FEC regulations by providing links to candidates' Web sites and holding online debates between the contenders.
The FEC decided to exempt DNet from federal limits on contributions or expenditures because it is a nonpartisan Web site.
DNet was unsure how to apply the FEC's older guidelines -- such as the federal law that prohibits corporate contributions to federal candidates -- to the Net.
"We're a nonprofit corporation," said Tracy Westen, DNet's president. "We created DNet and allowed candidates to go on our site and create an ongoing online debate. Is that an in-kind corporate contribution?
"The Internet does not fit the old media categories of the old FEC laws," Westen added. "It's stretching to the breaking point.
"The FEC understands this and is trying to figure out how to change without generating unforeseen consequences. They have reason to go slowly but the Net is moving very rapidly."
