Progressive Hawaii Now, a political action committee supporting clean elections, has been fined more than $3,000 for a cascading series of minor campaign spending law violations during and after the 2012 election campaign.

Progressive Hawaii Now reported receiving $2,650 in contributions and spending just $2,187.47 in support of several progressive candidates running in last year’s election, so it was by no means a big political player.

But the PAC dug itself deeper and deeper into a hole at every turn as the Campaign Spending Commission enforcement of a minor late reporting violation led to discovery of additional related but similarly minor violations.

Larger PACs representing special interests would have easily handled the initial errors by turning them over to their well-paid consultants and campaign staff. But the Progressive Hawaii Now PAC was operating on a shoe-string and had trouble dealing with the arcane minutiae of current campaign reporting requirements.

It’s been a pretty tough lesson in the specifics of campaign accounting for these clean election advocates.

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