Washington State Campaign Finance Enforcement Cases Since 2010

PDC enforcement cases document alleged violations of Washington's campaign finance, lobbying, and ethics laws. The dataset provides summary records for each case from 2010 onward, compiled by the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission. It was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in enforcement actions over time using the `opened`, `closed`, `election_year`, and `calendar_year` columns.
• Identify common areas of law violated by examining the `areas_of_law` and `subject` fields across cases.
• Assess penalty severity and collection status by analyzing `total_penalties`, `balance_due`, `total_paid`, and `sent_to_collections` columns.
• Examine case complexity and documentation through the structured JSON data in the `attachments` and `penalties` fields.
• Track case status and resolution details using the `status`, `status_description`, and `description` columns.

Strengths

• Temporal coverage spans from 2010 to the present, providing over a decade of enforcement history.
• Data includes structured JSON fields (`attachments`, `penalties`) for machine-readable case documents.
• Contains over 20 columns detailing case subjects, parties, financial penalties, and legal areas.

Limitations

• The total number of case records (rows) is unknown, making scale assessment difficult.
• Sample data is unavailable, preventing immediate review of data structure and values.
• Commercial use of the data is prohibited by statute, limiting application scope.

Provenance

Source

Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) via data.wa.gov.

Collection Method

Best-effort compilation by the PDC from its enforcement records.

Time Range

2010 onward.

Freshness

Updated in April 2026, indicating recent maintenance.

Geography

Washington State, USA.