In the year 2014, why are Pennsylvania candidates not filing campaign contribution reports electronically?
Right now, a large percentage of legislative and statewide candidates mail hard copies of their quarterly campaign finance reports to the Bureau of Commissions, Elections & Legislation rather than submitting the data online. These reports then must be entered into a database manually by state workers. Often this is a tedious process that takes months to complete.
Under the Rendell administration, the outsourcing contract to complete the data entry was cancelled; this forced the burden of data entry onto internal staff, which on top of being responsible for their regular tasks, slowed the process by months.
If reports were filed electronically, voters could easily access pertinent campaign contribution information instantaneously from an online database. This means that voters would be aware of special interests that are attempting to influence candidates with large contributions BEFORE an election.
Barry Kauffman, Executive Director of Common Cause Pennsylvania spoke to the Susquehanna Valley Progressives recently and discussed this issue as one of his organization’s major priorities; there is legislation currently in the senate that would require all state-level candidates to file their campaign reports electronically.
This is commonsense legislation that would improve not only transparency in our election process but efficiency in our government. So why is it taking so long to pass a bill that would simplify and expedite the campaign reporting process, save tax dollars on manual data entry (which is probably outsourced anyway) and make our election process more transparent? You should ask your legislators.
Learn more
http://www.commoncause.org/states/pennsylvania/issues/money-in-politics/exposing-dark-money/
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billinfo/billinfo.cfm?syear=2013&sind=0&body=S&type=B&bn=0778