Election Board complaint
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 6/16/08 @ 3:33 pm - Filed Under Featured, Local Politics
While I was out of town Saturday I received a letter from the Allen County Election Board informing me of their meeting to discuss my complaint.
They will be meeting on Tuesday, June 17th at 2 PM in Conference Room #1 on the 2nd floor.
Unfortunately I will not be able to sttend this meeting.
Maybe somone reading this blog can go and tell me how it went?
The Allen County Democratic Party already amended the Campaign Finance report that my complaint concerned. Clearly they did file it erroneously as my complaint stated.
I hope that the Allen County Election Board comes out and defines what a debt is.
My expectation is that they will state that bills should be listed as debts if they are past due.
Mike Sylvester
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3 Responses to “Election Board complaint”
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Mike, where is the election board located now? I know they moved from their old office on Calhoun St.
Mike, I agree that all debts should be reported. Anywhere that politics and money converge, there should be complete transparency. This is the only way to ensure that nothing illegal or otherwise inappropriate is going on.
However, I do wonder how easy this will be to actually define. For example, suppose that they have a credit card on which they charge $1000. Their monthly bill on this will likely be around $50. So, do they report a debt of $1000 or a debt of $50?
According to your proposed definition “My expectation is that they will state that bills should be listed as debts if they are past due,” it would appear that they do not need to report this at all, so long as they are making their payments on time.
If you went with the strictest definition of debt, then this would also include unpaid utility bills. Suppose the bill is prepared and sent out on June 28th, but not due until July 8th. So if a finance report is due on July 1st, are they to report this utility bill as a debt?
Now, suppose that one party receives their bill on June 30th, so they either pay the bill that day, or include it as debt on their report. But what if the other party does not receive their bill until July 1st, a few hours after they filed their report? Are they in violation for not having included this bill? If the answer is assumed to be “no”, because they can’t be held responsible for a bill they hadn’t received yet, then what is to stop them from lying about when they received the bill in order to manipulate their finance report.
I realize this is very nit-picky, but I am pointing to the fact that “list all debt” is not as easy to define as some would suggest.
The Election Board is in the City-County Building.
As far as defining debts go I think all debts should be reported; so the $1000 credit card bill would be reported as a $1000 debt.
The only issue in contention in my mind is whether current bills are debts or not. In my opinion they are debts and should be reported; however, I do not think the Election Board will go that route.
For example lets say you are renting a building for your campaign and the bill is due to be paid on June 15th and lets say the reporting deadline is JUne 10th. In my opinion you should report the unpaid bill as a debt of the campaign for full disclosure.
Mike