© 1997 San Jose Mercury News
Monday, July 7, 1997
Campaign Finance Reporting Is In The Jurassic Era
EDITORIAL
by Betty Karnette and Jim Cunneen
Believe it or not, there is a California industry that involves hundreds of millions of dollars and yet does not use computers to organize its financial statements for disclosure purposes. The "industry" we refer to comprises the hundreds of political campaigns conducted in California every year.
Despite the fact that California is the high-tech capital of the world, this huge, powerful enterprise still requires that all of its relevant documents and methods for sharing information be conducted almost exclusively on paper.
During a two-year campaign and lobbying cycle, literally tens of thousands of reports constituting hundreds of thousands of pages will be filed with the secretary of state. Given this avalanche of paper, any attempt to place the figures in an understandable context is futile. It is time for the lumbering dinosaur of paper filings to give way to the computer and the Internet. Senate Bill 49, introduced by Senator Karnette, will accomplish this.
Think about it: While we live in a world where the Rev. Billy Graham now preaches on the Internet, and our highest level business executives hold forth with their customers and shareholders frequently online, politicians are not required to disclose up-to-date campaign contribution information in electronic form for easy access by voters from their home computer.
Eliminating paper and requiring candidates and interest groups to submit their reports via the Internet will allow all of that information to be available at the push of a button. Curious about who gave money to your assemblymember or senator? Want to know what bills the NRA or the Sierra Club is supporting? Simply look up their reports on the Internet.
The real irony is that most candidates and political action committees already use computers to privately track their activities and generate the required paper reports. Senate Bill 49 simply allows the report to be transmitted directly to the secretary of state and eliminates the need to produce paper copies. The technology exists and is used by other states. It is time that California came online.
While access to this information is essential in an open society, we must ensure that the rights of the individual are not trampled. Contributors to political campaigns know that their names will be included in public documents. However, they should have some insurance against unwarranted harassment or solicitations as a result of such easy access to personal information. The trick is to strike a balance between the public's right to know who is contributing to political campaigns with the contributor's right to privacy.
After much negotiation, we embraced the same standard as the federal government. The electronic information will contain the name, city and state of the contributor, but will omit any street address. We believe this provides necessary privacy protections while accomplishing meaningful disclosure.
This is the third consecutive year the Legislature has attempted to require online campaign filing. There is simply no more excuse for delay.
Senate Bill 49 contains no complicated formulas or byzantine regulations that only attorneys can understand. Instead, online disclosure will transform an unwieldy campaign and lobbying quagmire into a simple, accessible system that voters can easily utilize to help them in deciding which candidates to support or oppose. It will finally fulfill the promise of campaign disclosure that voters yearn for.
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Senator Betty Karnette is the author of SB 49. Assemblymember Jim Cunneen is the principal co-author of the measure in the Assembly. For additional information, readers may e-mail Karnette at Senator.Karnette@sen.ca.gov, or Cunneen at Jim.Cunneen@assembly.ca.gov
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