Ranked Choice Voting for San Juan County: Alleged Violation of RCW 42.17A.350 for inaccurate disclosure of Top 5 donors on sponsor identification on political advertising and RCW 42.17A.320 for failure to include full sponsorship identification including accurate top five donors' information on a campaign website (EY22, Nov22)

Case

#113965

Respondent

Ranked Choice Voting for San Juan County

Complainant

William Bangs

Description

The complaint alleged that Ranked Choice Voting for San Juan County, a local ballot proposition committee supporting Charter Amendment Proposition No. 3 in San Juan County, may have violated RCW 42.17A.350 for inaccurate disclosure of top five donors on sponsor identification on political advertising and RCW 42.17A.320 for failure to include full sponsorship identification including accurate top five donors’ information on a campaign website.

PDC staff reviewed the allegation(s); the applicable statutes, rules, and reporting requirements; the response(s) provided by the Respondent and Complainant; the applicable PDC reports filed by the Respondent; the Respondent’s data in the PDC contribution and expenditure database; and other relevant information, to determine whether the record supports a finding of one or more violations.

Based on staff’s review, we found the following:
• On May 18, 2022, the Ranked Choice Voting for San Juan County committee filed Committee Registration (C-1PC) with the PDC and selected the Full Reporting Option.
• The Complainant reported receiving a political flyer from the campaign on or about November 5, 2022. The flyer identified the top five contributors to the campaign as FairVote Washington, Jon DeVaan, Shel Kaphan, Rebecca Liebman, and Janet Brownell. The Complainant believed FairVote Action and not FairVote Washington should have been identified on the flyer.
• Per reporting in C-4 #110120985, the flyer cost was obligated to Moxie Media on October 5, 2022. This date is established as the date the advertisement was submitted to the publisher for publication.
• Additionally, the Complainant reported the committee maintained a campaign webpage and provided a screen shot, from approximately November 15, 2022, of the webpage. The webpage also indicated the top five contributors to the campaign as FairVote Washington, Jon DeVaan, Shel Kaphan, Rebecca Liebman, and Janet Brownell. The Complainant believes FairVote Action and not FairVote Washington should have been identified on the webpage.
• Jason Bennett, Ministerial Treasurer for the committee, indicated the webpage was created approximately in late August 2022. It was “updated at least twice since the ballots dropped in October” but because the site had been deleted at the time the complaint review was occurring, logs of when the webpage was updated no longer exist. Nevertheless, based on PDC staff’s use of a web archiving tool, https://web.archive.org/ , two instances of the webpage were discovered from October 4, 2022, and October 12, 2022. The top five contributors identified in these two instances of the webpage are the same donors as provided in Mr. Bangs’ complaint screen shot from November 15, 2022.
• On May 7, 2022, FairVote Washington, made an in-kind donation of $180 to the committee. The donation was the only donation made by FairVote Washington to the committee, during the campaign, but debt to FairVote Washington was incurred by the committee starting with the reporting period of 8/1/22 running through 12/31/22. A donation from FairVote Action, for $10,000, was received on 10/21/22. PDC staff reviewed the C-3 reports and confirmed the other identified donors did donate during the period specific to the creation of the flyer and the webpage. These donors met the statutory definition of a top five contributor per WAC 390-18-025.
• In his response December 2, 2022, Mr. Bennett explained the committee chose to identify FairVote Washington as a top five contributor on both the flyer and the webpage because “FairVote Washington will be inkinding some work on behalf of the committees so we thought it more transparent to include them in the Top 5 should the committees not raise enough money to reimburse FairVote Washington for work performed on behalf of the committees.”
• The committee did timely submit all required reports for Cash Receipts Monetary Contributions (C-3) and Summary Full Reports Receipts and Expenditures (C-4). These reports appear to accurately identify contributors, cash or in-kind amounts donated, debts and obligations. The committee filed a C-3 on January 27, 2023, reporting a cash contribution, received on 1/19/23, from FairVote Washington and a C-4 for the period 1/1/23-1/31/23 reporting all prior obligations as zero balances.
• The committee has expressed that it was not a proper assumption on their part to have identified FairVote Washington as a top five contributor based on incurring debt and forecasting the debt would be made in-kind if funds were not raised to cover the debt.
• Respondent does not have previous warnings or violations of PDC requirements.
Neither the date the political flyer was received by the public nor the date a committee webpage was accessed determine whether the identification of top donors was accurate in this case. WAC 390-18-025 identifies the “date on which the advertisement is published or otherwise presented to the public” is the point-in-time date which the top five contributors must be identified. As well, there is no statutory obligation to continually update a webpage or manually amend a flyer if larger contributions are received once the webpage or flyer are published.

Based on our findings staff has determined that, in this instance, no evidence supports a finding of a violation that warrants further investigation.

PDC staff is reminding Ranked Choice Voting for San Juan County about the importance of following sponsor identification and top donor requirements. When the reported top donors don’t match contribution records, the information can obscure who is funding the campaign just as easily as providing too little information. PDC staff expects in the future that the Respondent will adhere to RCW 42.17A.320 & .350 and PDC Interpretation No. 07-04 as well as any future PDC guidance, laws, and rules.

Based on this information, the PDC finds that no further action is warranted and has dismissed this matter in accordance with RCW 42.17A.755(1).

Case

Respondent

Complainant

Description

Disposition

Date Opened

Areas of Law

Documents

Subscribe for updates