31 May 2018 — 2153 mdt
FEC stands for Federal Evasion Conspiracy
Nominally, FEC stands for the Federal Election Commission, the agency where campaign finance reports for federal elections are stored and made available to the public. “Made available” is a term of art for “made available in the manner least convenient and most confusing to the public.” Which is what our blessings in the Congress and White House want.
This evening I downloaded fundraising data for the major candidates for the Montana Democratic primary for the U.S. House. I chose the comma separated values (CSV) format, an ancient although still serviceable format that one can import into applications such as Excel and Filemaker Pro. Here’s the first row for John Heenan’s preprimary filing:
"F3N","C00652495","Heenan For Congress","","PO Box 22966","","Billings","MT","59104","MT","00","12P","P2018","20180605","MT"," 20180401","20180516","Bishop","Randy","","","","20180524","51474.85","250. 00","51224.85","334116.11","41.00","334075.11","92769.50","0.00","200000.00 ","28726.20","22637.46","51363.66","0.00","111.19","0.00","51474.85","0.00" ,"100000.00","0.00","100000.00","41.00","0.00","151515.85","334116.11","0. 00","110000.00","0.00","110000.00","250.00","0.00","0.00","250.00","0.00"," 444366.11","385619.76","151515.85","537135.61","444366.11","92769.50"," 618048.15","3906.24","614141.91","721888.20","428.82","721459.38","460216. 24","128103.44","588319.68","0.00","5368.19","24360.28","618048.15","0.00", "350000.00","0.00","350000.00","428.82","91.97","968568.94","721888.20","0. 00","150000.00","0.00","150000.00","3906.24","0.00","0.00","3906.24","0.00" ,"875794.44"
Note to readers. I had to add line breaks to the quoted text. Otherwise, it stretched clear across the page and beyond the right vertical guide as one line.
There are no names for the fields. In part of the file, there are separate fields for first and last names. In another part of the file, first and last names are combined into one field. Dates are eight-digit numbers; for example, 31 May 2018 is 20180531. The five and four-digit zip codes are glued together. And so forth. It’s a throwback to the days of punchcards and memory starved mainframes.
Organizations such as Open Secrets and the major political parties have the skills and patience to parse these files and extract the information and present it in a useful form. So do banks, brokerage houses, and accounting firms. So does the federal government, when it wants to. I have the skills, but I really don’t have the time, and I most certainly don’t have the patience. Few things more infuriate me than gratuitous complexity.
The campaign finance reports for Montana are just as maddening, although in a different way.
None of this is necessary. The technology to present these data in real time and reader friendly formats exists, and has existed for decades. Banks are experts at the task. What does not exist is the political will to make it available in a timely and friendly manner. The politicians have a vested interest in delay and opacity, and the voters just don’t give a damn.