Specter took in $1 million too much, audit says

WASHINGTON - Sen. Arlen Specter's campaign committee received more than $1 million in excessive contributions during his 2004 race, according to an audit released last week by the Federal Election Commission.

The audit said that the Pennsylvania Republican's campaign committee had taken corrective action for much of the funds, but that excessive contributions totaling more than $100,000 remain unresolved.

Specter's campaign released a statement from the committee's treasurer, Stephen J. Harmelin, noting that the audit did not find the errors to be willful or intentional, nor had the problems affected the outcome.

The campaign "is confident that similar record keeping errors are to blame for substantially all, if not all, of the remaining amount, and will continue to work closely with the FEC to resolve this matter," Harmelin said.

Among other things, the audit found that in many of the circumstances where donors gave more than they were allowed to, there was not evidence that the donors had been notified that the money was redesignated for a later race or transferred as being from the donor's spouse. Harmelin said that the committee thinks the donors were notified, but that copies of the notifications were not kept.