Editorial: Filings are critical to elections

Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2002 | 8:58 a.m.

Every election season dozens of candidates fail to meet the deadlines for filing financial forms that are basic to open government. While the forms are often criticized for allowing reporting that is vague or hard to decipher, they nevertheless provide voters and watchdog groups with key information. The forms show who is contributing to the campaigns and how the campaigns are spending that money. There can be no disputing that the general public has the right to know this information. That is, unless you are a member of the Independent American Party, which this year is boycotting this essential underpinning of free and open elections.

This is a new twist on the age-old problem of late forms or the two or three dozen candidates who for one reason or another just don't ever file. Here we have an entire political party deliberately and collusively thumbing its nose at the law. One of the IAP candidates is even running for secretary of state, the very office that collects the forms and makes them available for public inspection. This candidate who so disdains filing campaign reports has filed a complaint with the state Ethics Commission, alleging that Secretary of State Dean Heller slandered him by saying (truthfully), "This guy wants to be secretary of state and he won't even follow the rules he's supposed to enforce."

Candidates who are late with the reports are subject to graduated fines, depending on how late their filings were, with a maximum fine of $5,000 for each violation. The secretary of state has the discretion to forgive candidates when they provide understandable reasons. But perennial tardiness or open defiance of the law is quite another story. Voters especially should take note of these candidates. And the 2003 Legislature should consider increasing the civil penalties in the cases of defiance or repeated tardiness.