The Federal Election Commission (FEC) announced that it reached a settlement with America Coming Together (ACT), ruling that the group violated federal campaign finance laws during the 2004 Presidential election. ACT agreed to pay $775,000 to settle charges that it used soft money to pay for federal campaign expenses. In 2004 the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21, and the Center for Responsive Politics filed a complaint against ACT for illegally spending soft money to influence the 2004 presidential campaign. ACT raised $137 million for get-out-the-vote and voter registration drives, and of that total the FEC "concluded that even for the approximately $30 million in disbursements that could properly be characterized as administrative and generic voter drive expenses, ACT should have used at least 90% federal and 10% non-federal funds." ACT should have paid for these activities with "hard money" because the FEC deemed its main purpose was to defeat President Bush. The Campaign Legal Center was pleased with this action, but disappointed that it took three years to do so. Both the long delay in resolving the ACT case and the relatively small fine imposed on ACT for almost $100 million in illegal expenditures make a powerful case for why case-by-case enforcement by itself will not work and why without proper regulations and prohibitive fines the illegal activities of 527 groups in federal elections will continue to undermine the nation's campaign finance laws.