New requirements meant to ensure voters can quickly see who donated money to hundreds of candidates for state and county offices won't be enforced until after this year's primary and general elections are finished.

The changes — pushed for years by open-government activists — require for the first time that candidates for the state House and Senate, and Office of Hawaiian Affairs, file electronic reports showing how their campaigns are financed, and how they spend their money, if it amounts to $5,000 or more.

Candidates for other offices have had to make the electronic filings for a decade, but lawmakers had steadfastly exempted themselves until last year, when they approved a package of changes to the law.

But the state Campaign Spending Commission says it won't enforce the filing requirement because it didn't have time to train all the affected candidates to use a computer program that records the donations, and is also switching to a different electronic filing system soon.

"It just didn't make any sense to force people to learn a system and then to learn a new system a couple months later," said commission director Barbara Wong.

Only one commission staff member was available to perform the training, while also juggling other responsibilities, she said.

In the meantime, candidates for the affected offices will be required to continue reporting their donations the old-fashioned way: on paper. The commission will scan those documents and post them online within 24 hours of each filing deadline, Wong said.

"We still meet the spirit of the law, which is to have the information online immediately when the reports are due," Wong said. The paper reports also are available for review at the commission's office.

There's a difference, however. The electronic reports feed a database that viewers can quickly sort through to determine additional information, such as whether a contributor to one candidate also donated money to others. That information can still be gleaned and compiled from the scanned paper reports, but the process can be arduous for those unfamiliar with it.

"It's not as readily searchable as electronically filed reports," Wong said.

Reviewing donation and expenditure reports can give voters an idea of who a candidate's strongest supporters are, and how that could influence the decisions they make if elected, she said.

"I think there are a lot of people who aren't aware that they can look at candidates' reports and see who's contributing, and what they're spending their money on, and I think it's critical to be informed when they vote," Wong said.

Candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, mayor and prosecutor have been required to make the electronic filings since 1995, and candidates for city and county councils were added to the law two years later. After years of pressure, lawmakers added the requirement to themselves and OHA candidates last year as part of Act 203, which took effect in January.

The foot-dragging was understandable because making it easier for voters to see the flow of campaign money can be embarrassing for politicians who are supported by various special interests, said Ira Roh-ter, president of Hawai'i Clean Elections, a political watchdog group.

"There's no real reason someone who receives more than $5,000 in campaign contributions can't file electronically," he said. "It's a totally political choice to make that information less available or more available."

But Rohter said the Campaign Spending Commission's decision to delay enforcement of the new requirement is understandable, given its small staff and plans to shift to a new filing system.

"I think they're doing the best they can," he said. "They've been underfunded for a long time, and the current electronic filing system is very obsolete."

About three out of 10 candidates who were not required to file their reports electronically had already begun doing so, but others seemed determined to resist, Wong said. Some would actually fill out the electronic report on a computer, but print out and file a paper copy rather than take one more step and file the report electronically, she said.

"The only thing I can think of is that they were thinking in the past that it wouldn't be online for a couple months," Wong said. But since the information will be scanned and posted, "they may as well hit the 'submit' button, because it's going to be there anyway," she said.

In the past, it has taken months for the commission to scan a backlog of reports from House and Senate candidates and make them available online. But the latest reports, filed in January, were posted within a day, Wong said.

"We just put the whole office on it and stayed until it got done, and had everything scanned within 24 hours of the reporting deadline, so basically everybody was online at the same time," she said. "So there won't be any advantage to those filing manually if they think for some reason that their reports won't be on there for awhile. That's not going to happen."

The commission will also, for the first time, scan and post reports from special-interest groups that form "noncandidate committees" to funnel money to a range of candidates or spend it on their behalf. Those reports will be posted soon after the Sept. 13 filing deadline for such committees, Wong said.

"I'm not sure how long it's going to take us, but it's going to be fairly quickly since it's the heat of the election period," she said.

The primary election will be held Sept. 23, and the general election will be on Nov. 7.