Closed gordonje closed 6 years ago
One example is KEVIN D MELTON who ran for assembly seat #78 in the 2016 primary and general elections.
Querying the FILERS_CD
table like so:
SELECT *
FROM "FILERNAME_CD"
WHERE UPPER("NAML") || UPPER("NAMF") LIKE '%MELTON%KEVIN%';
There are five records that seem to map to this guy:
FILER_ID XREF_FILER_ID NAML NAMF FILER_TYPE STATUS EFFECT_DT ADR1
-------- ------------- ------ ------- ----------------------------- ------ ---------- -----------------------------
1382941 1382941 MELTON KEVIN TREASURER/RESPONSIBLE OFFICER ACTIVE 2016-02-16 4876 SANTA MONICA AVE #148
1382943 1382943 MELTON KEVIN CANDIDATE/OFFICEHOLDER ACTIVE 2016-02-16 4876 SANTA MONICA AVE #148
1358738 1358738 MELTON KEVIN D CANDIDATE/OFFICEHOLDER ACTIVE 2015-04-27 4876 SANTA MONICA AVENUE #148
1358738 1358738 MELTON KEVIN D CANDIDATE/OFFICEHOLDER ACTIVE 2015-04-27 4876 SANTA MONICA AVENUE #148
1358738 1358738 MELTON KEVIN D CANDIDATE/OFFICEHOLDER ACTIVE 2015-04-27 4876 SANTA MONICA AVENUE #148
No errors when passing any one of these FILER_ID
values into the query string for Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx:
These web pages all include the message:
This committee has not electronically filed a Form 460/461/450 for this election cycle. For further information, click on prior sessions to see if historical filings are available. Also check for late contribution filings if a major filing deadline has not yet occurred for this election cycle.
Our derived calaccess_processed_candidatecommittee
table only has one mapping between one of these candidate filer_ids and a committee filer_id:
id candidate_filer_id committee_filer_id link_type_id link_type_description first_session last_session first_effective_date last_effective_date first_termination_date last_termination_date
----- ------------------ ------------------ ------------ --------------------------------- ------------- ------------ -------------------- ------------------- ---------------------- ---------------------
24253 1358738 1382942 12011 CANDIDATE CONTROLS THIS COMMITTEE 2015 2015 2016-02-16 2016-02-16 (null) (null)
I also checked the FILER_LINKS_CD
table from which we derive the above records. This appears to be the only candidate-to-committee mapping.
Here's where it starts to get a little weird: There actually are four Form 460 filings from this committee in 2016:
id FILER_ID FILING_ID PERIOD_ID FORM_ID FILING_SEQUENCE FILING_DATE STMNT_TYPE STMNT_STATUS SESSION_ID USER_ID SPECIAL_AUDIT FINE_AUDIT RPT_START RPT_END RPT_DATE FILING_TYPE
------- -------- --------- --------- ------- --------------- ----------- ---------- ------------ ---------- --------- ------------- ---------- ---------- ---------- -------- -----------
1930059 1382942 2090713 (null) F460 0 2016-10-07 10005 11003 2015 MPACHECO 11003 11003 2016-07-01 2016-09-24 (null) (null)
1902735 1382942 2072025 (null) F460 0 2016-07-18 10005 11001 2015 MDIGRAZIA 11003 11001 2016-05-22 2016-06-30 (null) (null)
1884296 1382942 2052405 (null) F460 0 2016-06-06 10005 11001 2015 MDIGRAZIA 11003 11001 2016-04-24 2016-05-21 (null) (null)
1867511 1382942 2045078 (null) F460 0 2016-05-11 10005 11001 2015 MDIGRAZIA 11003 11001 2016-01-01 2016-04-23 (null) (null)
But there aren't any records with these filing_ids in CVR_CAMPAIGN_DISCLOSURE_CD
, RCPT_CD
or EXPN_CD
SELECT 'CVR_CAMPAIGN_DISCLOSURE_CD' AS tablename, COUNT(*) AS the_count
FROM "CVR_CAMPAIGN_DISCLOSURE_CD"
WHERE "FILING_ID" IN (
2090713,
2072025,
2052405,
2045078
)
UNION
SELECT 'RCPT_CD' AS tablename, COUNT(*) AS the_count
FROM "RCPT_CD"
WHERE "FILING_ID" IN (
2090713,
2072025,
2052405,
2045078
)
UNION
SELECT 'EXPN_CD' AS tablename, COUNT(*) AS the_count
FROM "EXPN_CD"
WHERE "FILING_ID" IN (
2090713,
2072025,
2052405,
2045078
);
Which may be why they are suppressed by the website? Or are these being exclude because of some particular value in some particular column (I looked at FILER_FILINGS_CD.STMNT_STATUS
, but it is not that.
But at least our derived processed models are consistent with the website in excluding these filings. Might be worth looking at other examples of scraped candidates who did not have hyperlinks.
Couple more observations...
Pass the any of these Form 460 filing_ids into the query string for the CAL-ACCESS pdfgen tool, and you get a CGI error:
Also, if you look these filing_ids up in the FILINGS_CD
table, all of them have FILING_TYPE
value of 22005, which maps to something called "AMS". According to the CAL-ACCESS overview this stands for Agency Management Subsystems. Based on the workflow outlined in the diagram, I suspect AMS filings are all manually entered by staff members of the Secretary of State, Political Reform Division.
The bottom line question, which we seem incapable of answering on our own, is "How much money did Kevin Melton raise and spend while running for the state assembly in 2016?"
According the FPPC's current manual, candidates are supposed to file semi-annual campaign statements regardless of whether or not they raise or spend money.
So what exactly happened here? These are the only scenarios we can imagine:
While we do not know why the SoS does not publish an ID on the website, we have fixed this issue on our backend by reconciling the scrape with Form 501s and other CAL-ACCESS tables.
On the Candidates & Elected Officials page in CAL-ACCESS, some names are not hyperlinked and, thus, are collected without a scraped ID. We're talking roughly 40 percent of the collected candidates (about 2,400 records).
Can we figure out what's going on with these?