[ Report Home | Previous Page | Next Page ] Luddite PACs & Candidates: Texas Political Funds that Dodge the Internet   I. Introduction

Texas enacted a law in 1999 that required most state political candidates and political action committees (PACs) to begin filing campaign-donor data in a computerized electronic format as of 2000. The Texas Ethics Commission posts these data on the Internet, making this information vastly more accessible to the public than when such data are filed on paper. Yet loopholes in the 1999 law allow candidates and PACs to circumvent electronic filing if they submit affidavits swearing that:

1. They do “not intend to accept more than $20,000 in political contributions or spend more than $20,000 in political expenditures” in the corresponding calendar year; or
2. Neither they nor any of their agents “use computer equipment to keep current records of political contributions, political expenditures or contributors.”

Texans for Public Justice’s 2001 report Luddite Lawmakers revealed 66 incumbent state politicians who claimed no-computer exemption. This study takes a broader look, exposing Texas’ major-party candidates and large PACs (raising more than $20,000) that failed to make electronic disclosures for at least one reporting period from January 2001 to July 2002 (many of these Luddites will raise more money in the latter half of 2002). This dragnet yielded 234 candidates and PACs. From January 2001 to July 2002 these entities raised $7.8 million of political funds that they failed to electronically disclose (the tables in this report refer to this non-electronically disclosed money as “Non-E-Disclosed Money”).
 

Texas' 2002 Luddite Political Money

Filer Type	No. of Filers	Non-E-Disclosed Money Raised  Jan '01 - July '02	Average Amount  Raised
Statewide candidates	2	$1,806	$903
Legislative candidates	131	$3,264,156	$24,917
Judicial candidates	20	$373,723	$18,686
Board of Education candidates	15	$130,681	$8,712
Large PACs (raising >$20,000)	66	$4,041,306	$61,232
TOTALS:	234	$7,811,672	$33,383

These Luddites do not inhabit the caves of Tora Bora. Most of them seek to blend in with the computer-literate population of Austin, which one index ranks as the nation’s No. 2 high-tech region.¹  Electronic filing is not rocket science. Austin-based Campaigns for People recently held a training session to demonstrate the ease with which school kids can file electronic-disclosure reports with the Texas Ethics Commission. “It was not hard. It took maybe five minutes,” said Pease Elementary sixth grader Nicky Benitez-James. “If I can do it, I'm pretty sure they [politicians] can.”²  Luddites seeking remedial education can contact Pease Elementary School at (512) 414-4428.