1Q Plus Due by Tuesday, Feb 24

Good Saturday morning. Hope you’re weekend is starting off right. Hat tip to all of you working on your 1Q Plus Report that is due by Tuesday, February 24.

A couple tips for all of you, regardless of how you file.

1) Best to Go Ahead and File. If you are still waiting for information—an example is employment info on a donor—plan to file with what you have by the deadline. One thing the State Board is great about is the deadline is the deadline. By that we mean, you need to make the deadline. If you make the deadline with your report and your signature, you can freely amend when you obtain additional data about your data. You need to use best efforts to obtain donor data, but don’t let holes in data stop you. Transparency wins if you file with what you have in good faith and amend later. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

2) The Signatures Matter. Plenty of times we’ve seen committees timely file but forget to get the signature in by the same deadline. This means you’re late. The State Board has made it a ton easier by allowing you to use Certificate Signatures using Adobe. This means you can email your signature if you climb the learning curve quickly on using Certificate Signatures via Adobe. You may have heard of DocuSign or other vendors. However, for now, the only acceptable digital signature format is Certificate Signature by Adobe. Spend the time now to learn Certificate Signature by Adobe to save yourself some excitement come Tuesday.

3) Paper Filing is Still a Thing. Many of you can still file using paper. We are partial to electronic filing for a ton of reasons—most notably, you get all sorts of electronic time stamps when you e-file and e-sign. Gone are the days of things getting lost in the mail. But…but…but…if you are old school and want to paper file, make sure you’re eligible (has to do with type of office and amount of money in and out of your campaign) and make sure you know where to paper file. Here’s the State Board’s good words on knowing where to file: https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Training/Campaign_Finance/Candidate_Committees/Reports/Where_to_file_the_reports.htm

Here’s a handy link to find the address for your county board of elections office: https://vt.ncsbe.gov/BOEInfo

4) E-Filing and E-Signatures Go to One Place and One Place Only. In its effort to simplify things, the State Board has a simple rule about anything electronic: regardless of who you are, if you are electronic filing or electronic signing, you send your report and signatures to [email protected]. Clear and simple. That means if you choose to use electronic filing and signature, you send it there. Regardless of office.

5) Unless You Filed an Under Threshold Certificate, You have to File. One thing that is not intuitive perhaps is even if you have no activity—meaning you have no transactions that occurred—you still have to file. So, even if your committee hasn’t taken in money or spent money since the last Ice Age, you must file. Unlike some other regulatory reporting obligations in North Carolina, this is a time based filing obligation, not an activity based obligation. Err on side of filing.

Good luck. There are plenty of ways to get home on this in the coming days. Be sure to get’er done.

Take good care!

The ElectaFile Team

**By the way, if you’re reading this message, you’ve subscribed to our newsletter or filed a report using ElectaFile or both. If you’d like to unsubscribe from these emails, please click the link on this email to unsubscribe. We mean to help and, if you leave, we part as friends.**