I’ve recently written about the financial reports of North Carolina’s statewide candidates and how much each spent in this year’s primary election. The database for the statewide candidates can be found here.
A handful of candidates for statewide office had issues with their reports, but there have been far more issues with the financial reports for this year’s legislative candidates.
Of the 336 candidates seeking legislative office, nearly 14 percent had blatant issues with their campaign finance reports. These issues range from failing to submit their Quarter 1 reports (which makes those filings, at the time of this writing, a month late), submitting incorrect or inconsistent financial reports, and failing even to set up their committee with the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
When collecting the financial data on each legislative candidate, we reviewed a committee’s detailed receipts and expenditures only when we identified inconsistencies with its prior financial reports. We did not review the detailed receipts or expenditures for every candidate committee.
There are likely more candidates that would fit into this category upon a more thorough inspection of every candidate’s financial reports. A full breakdown of the issues we found with candidate financial reports can be found in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Breakdown of Mistakes in Quarter 1 Filings for North Carolina Legislative Candidates by Type and Chamber
Spreadsheets summarizing the latest financial reports for North Carolina House and Senate candidates can be found below. Issues that were found with each committee are color-coded by type and described in the “Notes” column of the spreadsheet.
Color coding:
- Red: candidates who failed to set up a committee with the State Board of Elections
- Yellow: candidates whose Quarter 1 reports are inaccurate or inconsistent
- Blue: candidates who have yet to file their Quarter 1 report
