What to display when we don't have finance data on candidates

[adborden]

There are several cases where we might not have finance data for candidates. Some of those conditions we can't detect because we don't keep track of information that we would need (like filing deadlines).

@sfdoran explains these different cases:

1. They do not intend to raise or spend $2,000 or more and are therefore not required to register their committee and file campaign statements. We know which candidates these are because they do not have a campaign committee with a filer name or a filer ID number. So a candidate can be in compliance and not have any campaign finance data.

2. The candidate has registered their committee and raised/spent over $2,000, but they have not yet been required to file - e.g. the first deadline for most of our candidates is 7/31 for 1/1 - 6/30/2018 unless they started fundraising in 2017. If they start their committee after 6/30, they may not show data until the pre-election deadline in September or when they file a late contribution report (Form 497). So again, they could be in compliance but not show any data.

3. The candidate has registered their committee but failed to file a campaign statement, i.e. they are out of compliance.

So yes no data does not mean they haven't received contributions. We just don't have data for one of the reasons above.

If you can indicate candidates without registered committees (those without filer IDs) versus those with registered committees, but no campaign finance data I think that would be good. I don't want people visiting the site to think no data means the candidate is in violation.

[adborden]

@sfdoran Thanks for the clarificaiton.

So for 1), we can detect this when the candidate does not have a filer_id and then display "This candidate has not yet registered a campaign committee"

For 2 and 3, we can't really detect this, we just know they have registered a committee because they have a filer_id. We would have to keep track of filing deadlines within the back end, which we don't today. What would we display in this case?

So if we detect a filer_id but we the contributions are less than 2000, what should we display? "This candidate has yet to meet the requirements for filing"?

cc @elinaru

[sfdoran]

@adborden candidates can file a 460 even if they have under $2,000 in activity. We have a couple candidates like that in 2016 - Sidebotham and Hummel. Their total contributions still showed up.

For 2 & 3, how about "No campaign data available for this committee"? We could add a link to the FAQ section that talks about How up-to-date is the data? It lists the reporting deadlines. We can add more explanation there as well.

[sfdoran]

FYI a candidate might have a figure for total contributions, but no itemized contributions to display if they were all under $100.

[adborden]

Where do itemized contributions show up on the site?

Are the filing deadlines set by FPPC/State, or are the deadlines specific to Oakland?

[sfdoran]

Itemized contributions show up on the candidate and ballot measure pages when we show contributions broken down by type (from individuals, committees, other, or un-itemized) and by where they come from (in Oakland, in CA, outside CA). Itemized contributions are the source for what appears on the committee contributions page as well.

The filing deadlines are set by the State. Some deadlines are scheduled (semi-annual and pre-election campaign statements aka Form 460). Other deadlines are not scheduled but are triggered by activity within certain time frames prior to an election, e.g. Form 497 (Late Contribution or 24-hour reports) or quarterly 460 statements by ballot measure committees.