Remember the attempt to qualify a California ballot initiative to allocate the state's electoral votes to the winner in each Congressional district, instead of to the statewide winner? Democrats naturally fought back, because their nominee would lose votes in such a scheme. Among their tactics was to complain to the FEC that then-presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and his financial backer Paul Singer had violated the law by setting up a company in Missouri to make donations to the initiative effort. The FEC has cleared Giuliani and his presidential commitee of any wrongdoing in the matter. The decision is here.

What would the crime have been? Under federal election law, as amended by McCain-Feingold, candidates for federal office can't participate in non-federal elections. The idea was to close a loophole in the campaign donation limits and prevent federal candidates and committees from skirting the limits by using state committees and campaigns. The ban would seem to apply to state and local ballot initiative campaigns, but the FEC has been divided on the questions of whether initiatives count. The decision in the Giuliani matter doesn't clarify this point. It simply says there's no evidence that Giuliani or his committee was involved in this particular initiative.