[EL] Check out Study shows who breaks campaign laws

[Larry Levine]

The actual reporting part of the scheme is not where the problems lie,
although there is a cost involved in leasing the software needed to file
electronically. And more and more jurisdictions are requiring online
reporting. This becomes another overhead item, along with professional
treasurers and attorneys necessary to track the every changing requirements
for what is reportable and on what time schedule as well as the wide range
of other campaign regulations, including the type size for disclaimers on
printed material and where on the face of the material the disclaimer must
appear. We have gone far afield from the simple notion of disclosure to a
game of gotcha in which a seemingly endless stream of "reforms" change the
rules and add new ones from election cycle to election cycle. 

Doug's notion that there is no such thing as a "ma and pa" candidacy for
something like school board couldn't be further from the truth. In small
school districts all across the nation people run for boards of education
seats that pay nothing more than a very small per diem for attending
meetings. They spend a couple of thousand dollars or less to campaign for
the office and they run the constant risk of tripping over rules and
regulations enacted in the name of eliminating the perception of corruption.

That, Doug, is what it's like out here in the real world of electoral
politics. As a political consultant I do a number of pro bono campaigns for
these small school district or city council seats. I see and deal with the
results of demagogic "reform's" year in and year out. 

Larry

 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Jon
Roland
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 11:24 AM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Check out Study shows who breaks campaign laws

 

Of course, but all the pieces haven't been assembled yet.

For example, Texas has gone to electronic filing for state candidates that
avoids some of the issues involved in missing deadlines. In past election
cycles a finance report had to be filed for a period that ended on the
deadline date and had to be postmarked on that date, meaning one had to
suspend all donation acceptances and all expenditures for long enough to
prepare and mail the report. (Texas has since changed the period ending
dates to be several days before the filing deadlines.) I got dinged twice
for a final report that was mailed before 4:00 PM at the main post office
but apparently didn't get postmarked until the next day: once for a late
report and once for a missed period report that was also due that day, and
which the final report was intended to also be. I also missed one deadline
after electronic filing was available by a couple of days because I
misplaced my password for the reporting tool the State was using at the
time. (It has since gone to filing through a web page.) I have just ignored
those fines ever since. (All reports were zero contributions and zero
expenditures because I tell supporters to spend their own money and not tell
me about it.)

However, each jurisdiction has its own reporting format that requires some
manual work to fill in. The best tool I have found so far to facilitate this
is Piryx (see button below as an example), which enables easy loading of the
data into other accounting tools to do things like get period totals.

I estimate that it would not be feasible or justified to engage professional
services unless the donations could be expected to exceed $500,000.00, which
rules out most down-ballot campaigns for any party and almost all campaigns
for minor party candidates.

Campaign finance rules are that only corruption rules.

On 08/14/2011 12:41 PM, Volokh, Eugene wrote: 

Could some of these problems -- at least to filing -- be relieved with
automation


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-- Jon
 
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