Expenditure Validation

The expenditure validation process analyzes expenditure data to identify violations of campaign finance limits and prohibited expenditures. When a violation occurs, the system presents you with the option to correct the violation or save the contribution and correct the violation later. If you choose to correct the violation later, the system saves the violation as an audit issue. You can process the violation by performing the steps for Processing Audit Issues. For information regarding validating expenditures, refer to Expenditure Validation.

Validation Process

1. If the Payee type is one of the registered Committee types, the system checks for valid Contributor/Recipient Committee type combinations as if this was a contribution. This check is based on the Contribution Limits tables. The Contributor Committee would be the Committee making the expenditure, and the Recipient Committee would be the Payee Committee. Refer to Contribution Validation for more information.

2. Voluntary Spending Limits (VSL): If validation passes the rule in step one and the entity making the expenditure is a Candidate Committee or a standalone Candidate and the Candidate has accepted VSL, the system performs the following procedure:

2. • The system determines the spending total for this Candidate or Candidate Committee by:

   • • Totaling all expenditures for the standalone Candidate or Committee within the election cycle date span. If the Candidate was a standalone Candidate before associating to the Committee, expenditures made prior to Committee registration, if they were within the election cycle dates, are included.

     • Including the amount of the current expenditure, or subtracting it for a returned expenditure.

     • Including amounts designated as interest payments for loan payment and loan payment expenditure types. (The reason is that loan payments are treated like returned contributions, not expenditures. Only the amount paid for interest is treated as an expenditure for purposes of VSL spending.)

     • Including expenditures that have a negative amount (which decreases the total amount).

   • The system checks the calculated spending total (as described above) against the spending limit for the Candidate's office according to the State Candidate Voluntary Spending Limits table. If the calculated spending total exceeds the limit, a warning is displayed.

3. The system checks all other non-table driven warnings listed in the business rules.

4. The system determines if this expenditure is a potential independent expenditure duplicate entry.

State Candidate Voluntary Spending Limits