It’s been over four months since the Board of Supervisors asked
and head elections official John Hodges promised to post the list
of people donating money to local candidates on the county’s Web
site.
It’s been over four months since the Board of Supervisors asked and head elections official John Hodges promised to post the list of people donating money to local candidates on the county’s Web site.
Now, 120 days later and weeks past the Nov. 2 election, there still has been no action to post the campaign contributors’ donations on the Internet. The sate requires candidates to report any contributor donating more than $99 on their form 460, which is made public. The process shines light on who is helping politicians find their way into office.
However, Hodges claims he doesn’t have the technical know-how or the staff to post the forms online. With a busy election and an onslaught of newly registered voters, Hodges said he’s been too swamped to get the system up and running.
Likewise, the Board of Supervisors, which knew full well the staffing problems at the Elections Office when they approved posting the information online in August, has also done little to help Hodges in the process. Simply tossing a mandate at an already overwhelmed office without providing any additional funding or technological support is hardly the path to a quick response.
Meanwhile the people of San Benito County are left out in the cold. Although 460s are available to anyone who wants to see them, you have to go to the Elections Office during business hours. The public deserves easy and convenient access to these documents on their own terms and posting 460s online makes the documents widely available for public scrutiny.
Just an hour away from Silicon Valley, San Benito County is worlds apart in technology. Hodges said he’s unsure what his office would need to make the dream a reality or how long it would take. However, both Monterey and Santa Clara counties post 460s online. They use a simple process that downloads the files to your computer.
According to our modest estimates, the Elections Office only needs a computer, the occasional help of a person who is knowledgeable in Internet programming to post the documents, and a telephone – so Hodges can call up these other elections departments around the state and ask them how they accomplished the seemingly daunting feat.
When it comes to keeping politicians accountable to the public that elects them, both the county and the Elections Office need to do everything in their power to help, especially when the technology to do so already exists. No one is asking to reinvent the wheel here, just to get it rolling.
