Michael Watson continues to lead the good fight to get Mississippi’s campaign finance reporting brought into the 21st century.
The secretary of state is again asking the Legislature to require electronic reporting by all candidates for state, district and local offices of the contributions their campaigns receive and how they spend the money.
Currently in Mississippi, only paper records are required, and there’s no centralized repository for all of them. State and legislative candidates file their campaign finance reports with the secretary of state, but local candidates file theirs with their local clerks.
The Secretary of State’s Office creates digital copies of the reports it receives (if the digital copies have not been already created by the submitting candidate) and uploads them to its publicly accessible website. Those reports can sometimes be hard to read, and they always are difficult to navigate because the individual entries on those pdfs are not searchable. A reporter or anyone else wanting to know if there is a pattern to the giving has to go through the painstaking process of looking at all the documents to try to figure it out.
If the information was keyed in and submitted electronically, it could be indexed so that if someone wanted to know to whom and how much an individual or a political action committee is giving, it would take a few keystrokes and a few seconds to get the answer.
The situation at the municipal and county levels is even worse. It’s all paper records that are filed away, and apparently no one is making sure the documentation even gets filed at all.
Recently, Jackson’s indicted mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, acknowledged that he has not filed a campaign finance report since 2021, the last time he ran for the office, even though state law requires annual reporting even in non-election years. That omission is particularly noteworthy since Lumumba is accused by federal prosecutors of accepting bribes in the form of campaign donations.
Under current law, failure to file a campaign finance report is a misdemeanor, subject to penalty of fine and/or jail time. Those who are in office and don’t file also are supposed to have their pay withheld until they catch up.
This is obviously not happening, as Lumumba’s case shows. Watson wants his office to be given the authority to enforce the law, including the power to investigate complaints and issue fines for violations. Currently enforcement of the state’s campaign finance laws lies with the attorney general and district attorneys, none of whom seem all that enthusiastic about carrying out that part of their jobs. It would be better to give the responsibility to someone who actually wants it.
The only reason the Legislature hasn’t adopted these reforms is because some of its members would rather not have to comply. They benefit from a less-than-transparent system and weak enforcement.
If Watson keeps on pushing and the public gets behind him, maybe it will happen. He deserves credit for the effort.
