City and County of Denver, CO
01/27/2023 | Press release | Archived content
Disbursements Continue from Voter-Backed Fair Elections Fund
Disbursements Continue from Voter-Backed Fair Elections Fund
Published on January 27, 2023
Disbursements Continue from Voter-Backed Fair Elections Fund
DENVER - The Office of the Denver Clerk and Recorder is authorizing payments from the Fair Elections Fund (FEF) to candidates for the April 2023 Municipal Election.
Disbursement from the reporting period ending on January 20 will occur in two batches, similar to the second disbursement in November. The first batch will cover contribution information received by our office on or before January 8, 2023, and the second batch for this reporting period will cover submissions received by our office January 9- January 20. The office will make final totals for funds disbursed to candidates available on Searchlight when both batches of the disbursement have been verified.
To release matched funds to candidates, the Office of the Denver Clerk and Recorder must verify the residency and eligibility of each submitted donor using a multi-step, audited process. Though some committees have submitted information as early as January 1, official verification could not be finalized until the end of the reporting period to allow for committees to cure rejected submissions. In the best interest of both the public and the campaigns, the office continues to expedite turnaround times for this financial verification, while still ensuring accuracy. After the Clerk and Recorder's Office authorizes payment, the Controller's Office in the Department of Finance processes and disburses payments. The Controller's Office has made various payment options available including ACH, in-person check pickup and mail. Relevant documentation for the first batch of payments is expected to go to the City Controller's Office for processing on January 27, and the second batch is expected to go to the Controller's Office on February 1.
About the Fund
The Fair Elections Fund matches individual donations of up to $50 at a ratio of 9 to 1 out of a fund totaling $8 million, including the cost of administration. The April 4, 2023 election is the first municipal election since the implementation of the Fair Elections Fund. In the 2018 General Election, voters passed the citizen-initiated measure that created the fund.
Future payments to qualifying candidates will be made in conjunction with the filing of campaign finance reports and will continue through March 2023.
Information about participating campaigns, qualifying contributions and payment disbursements is available to the public via SearchLight Denver, the Denver Office of the Clerk and Recorder's campaign finance database. As with the second disbursement in November, the public can also see how those campaign funds were spent: https://www.denvergov.org/SearchLightDenver
Additional information about the Fund, including contribution limits by office, campaign qualification status and other campaign finance information can be found at: https://www.denvergov.org/campaignfinance
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The Office of the Denver Clerk and Recorder provides customer friendly processes that are efficient and transparent, records that are easy to access, and elections that are accurate, secure and convenient for voters.