I’m trying to research the number of elected officials in the u.s. I saw one post that alluded to 500,000 but I’m wondering how many of those are part time and unpaid. I really want to know the number of elections that require significant fund raising and public scrutiny (federal, state or local levels).
In this thread, How many elected public officials are there in the US?, I quoted a figure of over 500,000.
I have absolutely no idea how to limit that by your criteria, which as stated are too vague to address.
Ditto what Exapno Mapcase said. For example, would a local school board election meet your criteria? They DO advertise, but less than the mayoral elections.
In Minnesota, campaign finance laws require candidates to file with the Campaign Finance Board within 10 days of raising or spending over $100. So that’s when public scrutiny starts here.
(Except that there is not much enforcement of this, especially for minor candidates. Some have been known to have spent over this limit (“Is Awesome”, for example) but failed to ever file the required finance reports. And the Campaign Finance people decline to do anything about this – they say they won’t act until someone spends the money to hire a lawyer to file a formal complaint. So the law just goes unenforced.)
narrower criteria
Range for campaign funds raised = $5000-$5M
Full time, elected position
Federal, state, local
Salary range = $50k-$400K