The New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission is defending its decision to remove decades of campaign finance reports from its website, saying the temporary restriction is necessary to prevent the disclosure of home addresses protected under Daniel’s Law.
ELEC’s four commissioners issued a statement Tuesday supporting the continued removal of all pre-2021 reports from the agency’s searchable online database while employees review them for protected information. The commission hopes to complete the work and restore direct access within a year.
The records have not been sealed and may still be obtained by contacting ELEC or filing an Open Public Records Act request. But unlike the immediate access previously available online, agency employees must now review each request and apply legally required redactions.
“The objective is not secrecy; it is responsible disclosure,” ELEC Chairman Thomas Prol said at the commission’s monthly meeting. “ELEC should not become the governmental source from which a dangerous person obtains the home address of someone New Jersey law specifically seeks to protect.”
The statement follows criticism of the policy from POLITICO New Jersey Playbook, which characterized it earlier this month as “Daniel’s Law mission creep.”
The wholesale removal covers reports involving thousands of candidates, political parties and campaign committees filed over several decades, not merely documents known to contain the addresses of protected people. That makes researching historical campaign contributions and spending more cumbersome for journalists, watchdog organizations, political operatives and members of the public.
ELEC’s online database now advises users that reports filed before 2021 are unavailable to view or download and directs them to call the agency for assistance.
Daniel’s Law was enacted following the 2020 attack at the North Brunswick home of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas. A gunman who found Salas’s residential information online murdered her 20-year-old son, Daniel Anderl, and seriously wounded her husband, Mark Anderl.
The law restricts the disclosure of residential addresses belonging to judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and other covered individuals and their immediate families.
But the law’s application to campaign finance reports creates a conflict with ELEC’s central purpose: requiring candidates and political organizations to disclose who gives them money and how they spend it.
ELEC acknowledged Tuesday that credible legal arguments support restoring immediate online access. The commission noted that the Legislature reaffirmed New Jersey’s campaign finance disclosure requirements when it enacted the Elections Transparency Act in 2023, several years after Daniel’s Law took effect. It also pointed to language requiring that a government agency “knowingly” publish protected information before it may be held responsible.
“Reasonable lawyers can disagree about the precise reach of these statutes,” the commission said.
Still, ELEC rejected the argument that it should rely on the most disclosure-friendly interpretation while potentially exposing a protected address.
“Statutory interpretation should not become an exercise in finding the most aggressive legal theory that allows us to accept an avoidable risk of serious harm,” the statement said.
The commission characterized the restriction as a choice between immediate, unreviewed access and a slower system allowing employees to check reports before releasing them.
“A short delay in obtaining an older report is a burden, and one we should minimize,” ELEC said. “But that temporary inconvenience is outweighed by our obligation to comply with the law and the potentially irreversible consequences of disclosing protected residential information.”
ELEC said it is consulting with the state Office of Information Privacy and considering regulations or narrowly tailored legislation to reconcile the two laws. Full online access will be restored once the older files have been reviewed and appropriate safeguards are in place, the commission said.