Author: ah312

3. Qualify for office with the Secretary of State’s Office or with your local qualifying officer.

This is the most critical step in running for office – unless you properly qualify for your election, your name will not appear on the ballot. You can mess up the other steps and you might end up paying a fine for an ethics violation or having to pay for items personally and reimburse yourself later. But if you mess up qualifying, you won’t be eligible to run in your election.

For state-level offices, qualifying is simpler, as the Secretary of State’s office will announce qualifying dates and places.  For offices like State House of Representatives, State Senate, or Superior Court Judge, qualifying will be done either through the state political parties for partisan offices, or the Secretary of State’s office for nonpartisan offices.

The last two election cycles, these qualifying periods have been in early March. Qualifying dates for 2017 and beyond have not yet been set or announced, but I’d go ahead and pencil into my calendar to start looking for qualifying dates at least 6-12 months in advance of the election.

The best source of information for qualifying for state-level political offices is the Georgia Secretary of State’s website.

For State level qualifying, you will need the following items:

Republican candidates

Photo ID
Payment Money Order or Certified Check payable to: Georgia Republican Party (Federal and State only)

Democratic candidates

Photo ID
Payment – Money Order or Certified, Campaign, or Personal Check payable to: Democratic Party of Georgia (Federal and State only) (Signed affidavit required for money orders & certified checks)

Nonpartisan candidates

Photo ID
Payment – Check, Money Order, or Credit Card
Payable to: Georgia Secretary of State (Federal and State only)

For paying your qualifying fee, I highly recommend paying with a money order or cashier’s check.

In 2012, an incumbent County Coroner was disqualified from his election after the check he used for qualifying was returned.

A bounced check has bounced incumbent Columbus Coroner Bill Thrower out of his race for re-election.

The Muscogee County Board of Elections and Registration voted Friday to disqualify Thrower because a check his wife Hope wrote the local Democratic Party for his qualifying fee was returned for insufficient funds. Hope Thrower told the board she didn’t have her glasses the day her husband qualified and wrote a check from the wrong account.

Elections board members said the law’s phrasing of “shall automatically find” left them no leeway to grant the Throwers any concession. The five-member board voted unanimously to disqualify Thrower.

This also happened to a candidate for State Senate in 1998  and the City of Norcross noted in 2014 that:

A candidate is subject to automatic disqualification in the event that the candidate pays his or her qualifying fee with a check that is returned for insufficient funds. See O.C.G.A. 21-2-6 (d); see also SEB Rule 183-1-10-.01

It’s even happened to a Presidential campaign.

Please do not let your name become a cautionary tale for future candidate.

Finally, we note that some offices require additional affidavits to be filed as part of your qualifying, and candidates for Sheriff must be fingerprinted.

Additional affidavits are required for:

Sheriff
Coroner
Tax Commissioner
Clerk of Superior Court
Judge of Probate Court
Local Boards of Education

Georgia law has additional requirements for candidates for Sheriff.

The information above is current as of June 24, 2016. Please double-check everything before relying on it.

2. Get a bank account.

The Ethics in Government Act requires that candidates for public office deposit any contributions into “a campaign depository account opened and maintained by the candidate or the campaign committee. §21-5-30(c)

This is sometimes easier said than done because most banks are used to dealing with either individuals or business entities with some legal form of existence – a partnership, corporation, LLC, etc. Most campaigns at this level will not choose to incorporate, but to simply organize under the Commission’s Campaign Committee designation.

Here’s my advice: go an meet with your bank’s branch manager and tell him or her what you’re trying to accomplish. “I’m going to run for office and I need a checking account for my campaign. It’s not incorporated, but the account needs to be in the name of the Committee.” Then ask them what you need to do. Some will require a copy of your RC form, or printout of the Commission website showing you have registered your campaign. Or they may suggest opening an account in your name that also bears the name of the committee.

I highly recommend getting a debit card for your campaign account. You will find yourself ordering goods or services online, or paying for a campaign meal at a restaurant that doesn’t take checks. Having a debit card means you can do this without the hassle of paying it yourself and then either reimbursing yourself from the campaign account or accounting for the expense as an in-kind contribution from yourself to the campaign.

I also recommend avoiding both interest bearing accounts and fees. Each of those introduces additional automatic transactions that still have to be accounted for. At this level of campaign, you won’t have enough of a balance to make collecting interest worth the hassle of recording a 23-cent interest payment on your campaign disclosures.

1. File your initial documents with the Georgia State Ethics Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission and/or your local filing office.

Before you can accept contributions for your campaign, you are required to register a campaign committee with the Commission.  Section 21-5-30(g) of the Ethics in Government Act states:

Neither a candidate who is not a public officer nor his or her campaign committee may lawfully accept a campaign contribution until the candidae has filed with the commission a declaration of intention to accept campaign contributions which shall include the name and address of the candidate and the names and address of his or her campaign committee officer….

The way you do this is by filling out Form DOI, the Declaration of Intention to Accept Campaign Contributions. This can get a little bit tricky. For “State Level Filers,” the Form DOI says on its face that you file it with the Commission. For “Local Level Filers,” the form states that you file with your “local filing entity.”

How do you tell if you’re a State Level or Local Level candidate for filing your DOI form? If you’re running for County Commission, Coroner, Sheriff, Board of Education, Probate Judge, etc., you will file your DOI and all other ethics filings with the county elections superintendent. If you are running for State Court Judge or Solicitor, you will file at the county level. If you are running for Mayor, City Council, or other municipal office, you file with the City Clerk if there is one, and if there is no clerk, with the chief executive officer of the municipality.

State level offices include all statewide elected officials, state House of Representatives and state Senate, Superior Court Judges and District Attorneys.

My advice for your initial filings is to personally deliver the documents, and take an extra copy with you. When you file your documents, ask to have the extra copy stamped or signed by the clerk with a notation that they were filed and the date. This way, if the documents you filed ever go missing, you’ll have your own copy to prove you filed properly.

While you are filing with the Ethics Commission or your local filing officer, we recommend also filing the Form RC, Registration for a Candidate Campaign Committee. This may come in handy when you get to the next section, where you need to open a campaign bank account. It also allows you to designate someone else to sign checks or file documents on behalf of the campaign. I recommend keeping it simple and using “[YOUR NAME] for [OFFICE].” So if I were running for King of Georgia, my campaign committee would be Todd Rehm for King of Georgia.

When you’re filling out those forms, many candidates get caught in the issue of who should serve as their campaign chair and treasurer. For starters, the candidate himself can serve both functions. Often, candidate prefer to have a recognized politico or community leader serving as Chairman, but it’s not necessary. For Treasurer, keep in mind that he or she will likely be filing campaign disclosures on your behalf, and may have access to the campaign checkbook. It’s nice to have an accountant or banker as your treasurer if you have a friend who is willing to serve. But the most important trait I look for in a treasurer is trust and accountability. The campaign disclosures are not complicated, but they require an eye for detail and a passion for filing on time.

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