Funding Liberty — The P Transaction

The P Transaction

Accounting software is seldom the stuff of political machinations. Accounting and programming can be dry-as-dust topics. The P Transaction was different. Through the P Transaction, Perry Willis and the Browne Campaign cost the Party tens of thousands of dollars, enhanced Willis’s salary, and selectively increased the 1998 and 2000 delegate counts of pro-Browne states.

How could an accounting module do all this? The National Party has a database system to keep track of members, donors, accounts, and ledger entries. In 1996, the database contents were maintained by computer code written and maintained by activist John Famularo. Corresponding to each allowed set of changes to the database was a “Transaction” [We are discussing the 1996 system, which has since been changed.] In National Committee coding parlance, a “Transaction” was a computer code module that when invoked modified the data base in specified ways. For example, the “C Transaction” was invoked when a donor gave cash. The contribution was recorded as associated with the donor, the cash on hand record was updated, and if the contribution was at least $25 and the donor was a member (someone who had signed the pledge) the member’s period “in good standing” (Party nomenclature does not quite match this standard parliamentary phrasing) was extended by a year.

On May 3, 1996,Party National Director Perry Willis asked John Famularo to add a new transaction, the ‘P Transaction’, to the Party database system. The nominal purpose of the transaction was to permit the National Party Headquarters to record contributions to the Presidential campaign, if hypothetically the LNC took over the accounting and FEC filing requirements for the Presidential Campaign. However, the P transaction did other things. In particular, if a person were on file as having signed the pledge, and if they gave at least $25, their expiration date (after which they were no longer a member in good standing) would be incremented by a year. I have confirmed from John Famularo— who wrote the computer code—that the incrementation process for the P Transaction was cumulative. If a donor gave repeatedly, for each separate donation of $25 or more an additional year was added to the member’s period in good standing.

The actual memo requesting the changes, as supplied to me by John Famularo, reads

“Subj: system request

From: Perry Willis 76216,2726
To: John Famularo 70726,1575
Date: May 3, 1996

I know you’re very busy with the convention so I’ve tried to keep requests to a minimum (there haven’t been any for awhile), but in preparing for the nomination campaign there is one change that we need to have made before the convention if humanly possible. This is so that we can do caging and FEC reporting for the Presidential campaign should it come in house (as appears probable).

The database should be modified to allow the entry of a new class of transactions. They will behave similarly to the “M” (Marrou/Lord) transactions in 1992. Since we don’t yet know who will win the nomination and because we probably want a more generic approach anyway, we will use the letter “P” to denote Presidential transactions.

The P will be stored in the field bacct. So that means the P distinction is at the level of N (NatCom), E (Exempt), W (Write-Off) and K (In-Kind). We expect to limit P transactions to a certain range of source codes, but it is not necessary to program that limitation.

In 1992, the Marrou/Lord transactions did not affect properties like expiration dates. These new P transactions, however, should be counted for calculations like expiration date. We want all of the presidential contributors to get LP NEWS and all of our other mailings, and to become members if they sign the certification. The simplest way to describe it is that P transactions should be included in c12, t12, t36 and t99, just like N/W/K transactions. Any P material sales transactions should be included in t12/t36/t99, but not in c12, just as with other material sales transactions. Because P transactions are included in c12, we would expect properties like the following:

If an individual has no expiration date and they have $25 in P transactions, they should be given an expiration date (subscriber if no certification on file, otherwise a subscriber).

If an individual has a signed certification and they give at least $100 in P and/or other contributions in a year, they qualify for a premium membership.

P transactions should be listed on the daily report. On the summary page, there should be a separate column for P transactions (Natcom/Exempt/Presidential). P transactions should NOT be included in the summary of transactions by source code (option A on the Reports menu).

Let me know if you see any problems.”

Famularo notes that the intent as expressed to him was to have the code in place before the election, and to apply it before the election only to Harry Browne’s campaign records, so that Browne donors and only Browne donors would receive such benefits as the membership renewal or extension.

The Party had long had in place another Transaction Code for importing the names of potential contacts as supplied by a Libertarian political campaign. This other Transaction added the names, addresses and other contact information to the appropriate part of the Party database, so that the contacts could be used for future mailings and outreach. However, the long-standing Transaction had no effect on the membership roster, only on the mailing and contact lists. In contrast, the P Transaction expanded the roll of members whose dues were current. The number of members determines the state-by-state allocation of delegates to future National Conventions and, as will be seen, influenced Perry Willis’s pay from the LNC.