Candidates and political parties will face sanctions if they fail to submit their campaign finance reports to the Office of the Public Auditor by today, Dec. 27, 2005.<\/p>\n
A $100 fine may be assessed against a candidate for each calendar day that his or her report is late. Any candidate who refuses to file a campaign financial report may be fined up to $50,000 or imprisoned for up to one year, or both.<\/p>\n
Sanctions will not apply to parties or candidates who have requested and been granted an extension by the Commonwealth Election Commission.<\/p>\n
Those required to file statements of account for the recently concluded election season include three political parties, 13 independent candidates, and 23 non-partisan candidates.<\/p>\n
The Republican Party accounts for 29 candidates; the Covenant Party, 27; and the Democratic Party, 13 candidates that ran for office in the Nov. 5, 2005 election.<\/p>\n
As of Tuesday last week, fewer than 10 candidates have submitted campaign finance reports, according to public auditor Michael Sablan.<\/p>\n
The statement of account must show details of any contribution worth at least $100 that a party or candidate received during the election period. Contributions include any monetary or in-kind support issued to a candidate to advance his political bid.<\/p>\n
Election law prohibits anonymous contributions. Any candidate who receives an anonymous contribution is required to turn the contribution over to the Commonwealth Treasurer for deposit into the CNMI general fund.<\/p>\n
A candidate may retain excess campaign funds in a designated bank account for use in future elections or campaigns. A candidate who uses these funds for having post-election meetings, rallies, or parties must file an amended campaign statement of account to report the expenses incurred.<\/p>\n
All political contributions should be used for campaign and election purposes only. They should not be used for personal benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Candidates and political parties will face sanctions if they fail to submit their campaign finance reports to the Office of the Public Auditor by today, Dec. 27, 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}