Many countries have legislative regulation of party and campaign financing. A typical regulatory scheme might involve public disclosure of campaign donations, expenditure and debts, as well as payment of public funds to parties and candidates for campaign expenses. Some countries also limit the amount of campaign expenditure permitted by candidates and/or parties. Technology can be used to assist with the party and campaign financing regulatory role of the election management body (EMB) or other relevant regulatory body.
Reporting by parties and candidates
Technology can be used to facilitate the reporting requirements of a party and campaign financing scheme. Party and campaign financing reports may require detailed and complex data to be produced. Electronic data capture of report details can greatly assist an EMB in its regulatory and reporting requirements. Electronic submission of data by candidates and parties can also help them fulfil their requirements correctly and expeditiously.
Candidates and parties can submit electronic campaign finance returns using software packages supplied by the EMB or other relevant regulatory body. This software would typically contain electronic forms, with specified fields to be completed. This software could be distributed by disk or email, or could be provided via the internet. The software could lead the party or candidate through the reporting process, ensuring that all relevant fields are correctly completed.
Where parties and candidates do not submit electronic finance returns (either because the facility is not available or the party or candidate is unable to) and hardcopy returns are submitted, the EMB or other relevant regulatory body may still find it useful to electronically capture the data using data entry operators or optical scanning methods.
Auditing of party and candidate campaign finance reports
The EMB or other relevant regulatory body responsible for auditing party and candidate campaign finance reports can use technology to assist the auditing process.
Once reported data has been captured electronically, software can be used to store, sort and analyse the data. Partial amounts can be consolidated into relevant totals. This can help identify whether amounts donated or received have bypassed any legislative thresholds.
Where different entities are required to report their involvement with common transactions (for example, where donors are required to disclose amounts donated and recipients are required to disclose amounts received), reported amounts from one entity can be cross-checked against corresponding amounts from another. Use of mandatory fields in databases can indicate where data is missing or incomplete.
Software can also be used to amalgamate and consolidate reported data, so that data submitted at a local level can be consolidated at regional and national levels to give an overall picture that cannot readily be perceived from the local reports.
Electronic capture of financial reporting can also be used to determine levels of public funding payable for campaign expenses, where such payment is linked to actual expenditure.
Public disclosure of party and candidate campaign finance reports
The EMB or other relevant regulatory body responsible for auditing party and candidate campaign finance reports is also likely to be responsible for publishing the reported data in a form that can be used by the general public. Again, technology can assist this process.
Electronic capture of reported data and software manipulating of that data can enable the regulatory body to present the data in a consistent format, and to consolidate the data to show regional and national totals that may not be apparent from the raw returns. Data can be published in a variety of formats, including paper hardcopy, CD-ROM, disk and Internet.
Where original hardcopy returns are required to be made public, in addition to providing photocopies, these can be optically scanned and made available on CD-ROM or the Internet.
