Referee PAC
Referee PAC | |
Annual reports were paused in 2018 due to enhanced hacking activity appearing to originate from Russia. This was described in more detail in the following articles:
[1] "Washington, We Have a Problem" https://refpac.org/news-research/article-washington-we-have-a-problem/
[2] "Is the Russian FSB Targeting USA Military Recruits?" https://patch.com/texas/houston/russian-fsb-targeting-usa-military-recruits
As a result of the unprecedented attacks on the website, https://refpac.org , we sought a new host as our previous host charged for each added security measure. Dr. Kuhlman from https://blueskydigitalstrategy.com picked up our website. Her services are more extensive, hence more valuable, so hosting us became an in-kind donation. She was particularly intrigued to get a look at the website attacks we were experiencing in more detail. An unexpected side effect that she noticed was an increase of attacks on her other websites that were hosted on the same server as ours.
January of 2020 was particularly rough. In September 2019, I suffered a personal loss. This turned into a financial one as well as $100.00 was unaccountably gone from the PAC's account from around the same time. Being discovered in January, the bank retained no records and the credit card company through which the transaction took place, Citibank (I and the PAC don't have a Citibank card), would not release any details. So I had to file a police report. Myself and the Assistant Treasurer donated the funds to replace the missing amount.
Also in January 2020, I mistook the Texas Ethics Commission filing deadline, January 15th, for the Federal Election Committee deadline of January 31st. On filing an affidavit explaining my error and requesting forgiveness, the TEC waived the fine. This decision was due to our very small size.
Beginning in 2019, I tested out whether video news would be of interest (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvu5_YdEY4--IfWOxoqMpRA). There was not sufficient viewership relative to the tools I had in hand and time required to produce them to continue the effort. Other approaches are likely in the future but not 2021.
Compiling the information for subscribers for the 2018 election was very demanding. Many officeholders changed in that election, and we are finally catching up.
One of the issues that we have faced is "growing pains". As the database of offices has expanded, the tools in order to process them and keep them up to date had to be modified, automated. There were many steps that could be reduced in time. As a result, a lot of work between 2018 and 2020 has been comprised of this backend effort.
I cannot emphasize enough that Texas has done beautifully with the creation of the Special Purpose District Public Information Database (https://spdpid.comptroller.texas.gov/). We unfortunately horrified a high school student interested in politics with the challenge of tracking down the entities that had put bonds on the May ballot several years ago. Montgomery County added a new "Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District" for all precincts, and Dallas and Fort Bend Counties have officially been added to the system. Brazos County is going to be added in 2021.
We have expanded our subscribers via social media. While our direct subscribers continue to be small, approximately 90, secondary subscribers in meetup have expanded extensively to approximately 615.
Contributions are flat.
Political Advertising paid for by Referee PAC