Privacy Act Notice
The Federal Election Commission ("we" or "us") issues regulations to carry out the provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act, 2 U.S.C. §§ 431 et seq., and other Federal campaign finance laws. Our specific authority to promulgate regulations appears in 2 U.S.C. § 438(a)(8). We are also authorized to receive public comments on proposed and interim rules under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 553(c).
To make it easier for members of the public ("you") to comment on ongoing rulemakings, we have created FORCES, the FEC Online Rulemaking Comment Entry System. FORCES enables you to submit comments via our website, at http://www.fec.gov, on any of our rulemaking documents currently open for public comment.
These rulemaking documents are also published in the Federal Register. If you wish to submit comments to us by a method other than FORCES, you may do so by any method identified as permissible in the specific Federal Register document.
You are not required to provide us with comments on any rulemaking document. If you do choose to provide comments, we will publish your comments on our website, in accordance with Section 206(d)(1) and (2) of the E-Government Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-347, 116 Stat. 2899 (Dec. 17, 2002), codified at 44 U.S.C.A. 3501 note (2007). We will also use your comments in our deliberations on the rulemaking, and will retain them in our records.
Personal Information Submitted on the FORCES Webform
To submit comments through FORCES, you must first complete a FORCES webform on our website. The webform requires you to provide certain personally identifiable information, such as your mailing address. We collect this information to enable us to confirm who submitted the comments, and to make sure that the public record is clear as to who submitted comments.
If you wish to testify at a hearing that we have scheduled or that we may schedule in the future on a pending rulemaking, you will have to provide certain additional personal information on the FORCES webform, such as your phone number and email address. We will use this information to contact you to schedule your appearance at the hearing. We will not publish it on our website.
The FORCES webform is an internal Commission document. Your name, city and state are the ONLY personally identifiable information from it that we will make public. We will retain the rest of the information in our internal files.
You are not required to provide us with comments on any rulemaking document. If you do choose to provide comments, we will publish your comments on our website, in accordance with Section 206(d)(1) and (2) of the E-Government Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-347, 116 Stat. 2899 (Dec. 17, 2002), codified at 44 U.S.C.A. 3501 note (2007). We will also use your comments in our deliberations on the rulemaking, and will retain them in our records.
Your submission of personal information on the FORCES webform is voluntary. We will not consider any comments submitted via FORCES, however, unless they are accompanied by a completed webform.
Personal Information Submitted Other Than on the FORCES Webform
We will publish on our website without alteration any personal information that you provide to us in comments or other documents uploaded via FORCES, other than the FORCES webform as discussed above. For this reason, we encourage you to remove any personally identifiable information from documents that you submit through FORCES that you do not wish to be disclosed such as, for example, your personal email address, phone number, home address, social security number, and any other personal or sensitive information.
In addition, please do not submit through FORCES any information that is restricted from disclosure, such as trade secrets and commercial or financial information. You will be deemed to have waived any asserted confidentiality or trade secret designation for information submitted to us through FORCES.
Routine Uses
Our routine uses for the personal information collected through FORCES shall be as stated in our System of Records Notice. Our System of Records Notice is published annually in the Federal Register.