Resources
- Campaign finance reporting law
- Frequenlty asked questions
- Candidates frequenlty asked questions
- Judicial candidates frequently asked questions
- Reports filed by candidates for federal office
- 10 day enforement memo
Statements
Vendors of Approved Software
The following vendors have developed Pennsylvania-compliant campaign finance reports for online filing. As vendors successfully submit online campaign finance reports in our testing environment, their information and contact information will be listed below.
Compliant Vendors
Adjutant Software's Campaign Toolbox
2055 Bond Road, DeLand, FL 32720-4531
Tel. 386-822-9181 * Fax 386-738-2124
scm@adjutant.com
Aristotle
205 Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E., Washington, DC 20003
Tel. (202) 543-8345 * Fax (202) 543-6407 *
support@aristotle.com
Campaign Deputy
PO Box 8141
Louisville, KY 40257
Tel. (202)915-0500 *
sales@campaigndeputy.com
Complete Campaigns
205 Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E., Washington, DC 20003
Tel. 888-217-9600 * Fax (202) 543-6407
info@completecampaigns.com
CPI Technologies' Landslide
2625 Walnut Street, Harrisburg, PA 17103
Tel. 717-214-5274 * Fax 717-214-5277
sales@cpitech.com
DAL Services, Inc.
PO Box 22116, Philadelphia, PA 19136
Tel. (484) 383-0099*
David@DAL-Services.com
DDCO
805 15th Street, NW, Suite 300,Washington, DC 20005
Tel. (202) 830-2038*
PACServices@DDCpublicaffairs.com
NetFile
2707 Aurora Road, Mariposa, CA 95338
Tel. (209)742-4100* Fax (209)391-2200 *
sales@netfile.com
NGP VAN
1445 New York Ave., NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005
Tel. (202) 686-9330 * Fax (202) 380-0548 *
info@ngpvan.com
The Pennsylvania Bar Association
100 South Street, Harrisburg, PA 17101
Tel. (717) 238-6715 * Fax (717) 238-1204 *
atrosky@pabar.org
Cision, Inc.
12051 Indian Creek Court, Beltsville, MD 20705
Tel. (800) 345-5572 *
grsupport@cision.com
ElecTekUSA
4017 Washington Rd, Suite 164, McMurray, PA 15317
Tel. (814) 619-3414 * Fax (724) 228-0948 *
E-mail Sales@electekusa.com
IsPolitical
4142 Adams Ave., Ste 103-550, San Diego, CA 92116
Tel. (800)926-0062
support@ispolitical.com
Technical Specifications
Electronic Filing of Campaign Expense Reports
Changes from Previous Specifications
There have been several changes to the technical specifications for electronic filing of campaign expense reports. There have been changes to the layout for all five data files. These changes were necessitated by the changes to the paper campaign expense reporting form. Highlights of the changes are listed below: In all five files, (filer.txt, contrib.txt, expense.txt, debt.txt and receipt.txt) the year has been added. >In the filer.txt file, the separate fields for candidate name (last, first, middle and suffix) have been removed. If the report is filed by a candidate, the name should be concatenated into the filer name field. In the filer.txt file, the treasurer name, address and phone number has been removed. The only address that is to be provided now is the address from the expense report cover sheet. In the filer.txt file, the office codes have changed from numeric to more intuitive 3-letter codes. Refer to the office code table below. In the filer.txt file, the party codes have been changed from numeric to more intuitive 3-letter codes. Refer to the party code table below. In the contrib.txt file , a new section code field has been added. This is to identify which section of the report the contribution record is to appear. In the contrib.txt file, the contributing committee number has been removed. In the contrib.txt file, there are now three separate date and amount fields to indicate if a particular contributor has given multiple contributions to the filer during the reporting period. In the contrib.txt file, the payment method has been removed. In the expense.txt file , the recipient identification number has been removed. In the expense.txt file, the expenditure code has been removed. In county code table , Forest county should be number 27, and Franklin county should be number 28. This is to correct an oversight in the original specifications.
The Department will support these new specifications immediately. It is our hope that the certified vendors will have their applications modified, and distributed to their customers by December 31, 1999. The Department will stop supporting the original specifications at some point past that date.
General Requirements for All Files
All data files provided to the Department of State must be ASCII text files. All data files must be comma (,) delimited; that is, a comma must separate all fields in the file. All data files must be text qualified with double quotation marks ("); that is, any field defined as alphanumeric must be enclosed by double quotation marks. A sample of this type of file is provided below:
1234,"Mary Jones",150.00,"123 East Main Street","Anytown","PA","171021234"
5678,"William A. Smith",,"123 West Main Street","Anytown","PA",""
In this sample, there are seven fields. The first field is a numeric field, followed by an alphanumeric name field, a numeric dollar amount field, an alphanumeric address field, and alphanumeric city field, an alphanumeric state code field and finally, an alphanumeric zip code field. In the case where no value is available for a numeric field, only a comma should be placed in the file. For alphanumeric fields that are not available, a set of empty double quotation marks should be placed in the file. These cases are both illustrated in the second record above.
Note: This sample is for illustration purposes only.
Files to Be Provided
There are five basic types of information that are to be data entered: basic filer information, contributions, other receipts, expenditures and debts. This information will be provided to the Department of State in five files: filer.txt, contrib.txt, receipt.txt, expense.txt and debt.txt, respectively.
Filer.txt will contain the information about each filer. This information is found primarily on the first page of the expense report. Contrib.txt will contain contribution information from Schedule I, Parts A, B, C and D as well as in-kind contributions from Schedule II, Parts F and G. Receipt.txt will contain information from Schedule I, Part E. Expense.txt will contain information from Schedule III. Debt.txt will contain information from schedule IV.