Aug. 27, 2001
Current Election Laws Need Tune-up
By J. Barlow Herget
RALEIGH - Any good mechanic will tell you that preventive maintenance is the best way to keep your car working well. The legal "machinery" of elections is no different, and there are two parts of the state’s campaign finance regulations that could use some timely belt-checking and screw-tightening.
Enforcement is one such area. Experience shows that people who violate current election laws have little to fear. Why? Because most of the campaign finance violations are misdemeanor offenses whose statutes of limitations are no more than two years. This presents a problem for district attorneys who are reluctant to spend time and resources on misdemeanor crimes when more serious felony cases must be prosecuted.
The other area of the law involves disclosure regulations. One of the most significant election reforms that followed President Nixon’s Watergate scandal was the rule to make public those people and organizations that gave money to candidates. While such campaign reporting laws are a pain-in-the-neck to candidates (I write from the experience of three campaigns of my own) the public has been better informed as to the identity of the people and special interests who are behind the candidates.
You cannot see the names if the candidates do not make timely reports (15 to 20 percent typically are filed late). And the penalties for non-compliance scare no one. Board of Election observers estimate that novice candidates are the ones most likely to make such mistakes. Moreover, disclosure rules do not apply to the campaigns of independent groups such as the National Rifle Association or Sierra Club who may run their own "issue" oriented advertising campaigns.
Another part of the disclosure rule asks contributors who give $100 or more to list their occupations. This is a small but informative piece of information. Candidates have no way of forcing donors to offer this information, and most are reluctant to send back the money or to spend the time and effort to obtain the occupation. It can be done.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Neely, a Raleigh attorney, provided the information on all but 1.5 percent of his contributors in the 2000 Election. To date, no one has been prosecuted for not listing the occupations of his or her donors.
Veteran Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby’s 10th District handles the majority of statewide election violations because the state Board of Election is located here. He illustrated the problems that he and other prosecutors face by recalling "two significant investigations" in which he has been involved in his 14 years in office.
"One was the 1988 [Sen.] Harold Haridson campaign [for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor.] Four individuals got together in eastern North Carolina and each gave $100,000 and two gave more than that," he said. The law limits individual contributions to $4,000 per election.
The only reason that Willoughby even learned about the violation was because of a separate federal Grand Jury insurance investigation into one of the four individuals more than two years later. That investigation uncovered the campaign violation, and federal officials turned the information over to Willoughby. Because the statute of limitations had expired, Willoughby could do nothing but make public what had happened. (The prosecutor points out ruefully that the state has no such Grand Jury powers to investigate suspected crimes.)
The other case Willoughby noted was one that involved "issue ads" by an independent political group, Farmers for Fairness, that represented the interests of large hog farmers. The group produced and paid for a heavy advertising campaign that targeted a state legislative race. A bluenose mule could discern whom the group opposed and whom it favored, although it did not specifically ask citizens to vote against or for a particular candidate.
Using state disclosure laws, Willoughby sued to obtain the names of those who had contributed to Farmers for Fairness. But when the case reached federal court, District Judge Terrance Boyle struck down the law. (Federal disclosure law is no better in regard to independent groups, which could become the real monsters under the bed of electoral politics when and if limits are placed on "soft money" contributions to political parties.)
State Sen. Wib Gulley, D-Durham, has championed campaign finance reform for years, and this year, he is optimistic that some legislation will be adopted. A bill that strengthens current laws has been approved in the Senate and a similar bill has been adopted in the House. The bills will increase civil penalties that can be administered by the Board of Elections for violations such as those discovered in the Hardison campaign. The legislation also extends by a few months the statute of limitations.
These are not grand reforms, but they promise to make North Carolina’s election machinery run a little smoother.
Barlow Herget is a businessman, writer and served two terms on the Raleigh City Council.
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