If you're wondering why Gov. Bev Perdue's political campaign can both claim to have detailed documentation of every private flight she took in her election bids, but profess to innocent human error for failing to comply with state law requiring full and timely disclosure of those flights, then you're probably also wondering why the State Board of Elections folded like a cardboard box Tuesday.

Despite the obvious public interest in some pointed questions - not only why the campaign didn't come clean on the flights when it was supposed to, but also whether state employees in Perdue's office were working on campaign matters on state time - the board simply fined Perdue's campaign $30,000 and called the matter settled.

Perdue issued a statement that said it was "clear there was never any intent by my campaign to conceal any flights or contributions" and said, "I look forward to putting this matter to rest."

It isn't. For one thing, Republicans are going to jump up and down about what they see as the board's attempted cover-up between now and Election Day. State Republican Chairman Tom Fetzer, who has kept the heat on Democrats for months about unreported flights, called the board's action a "whitewash" and asserts, plausibly, that the Perdue campaign willingly and knowingly failed to inform the public when it should have. (He did not mention that the Perdue campaign performed a voluntary audit of its flights and disclosed almost all the flights to the board earlier this year.)

And for another, the public is already interested to know why an elections board that was tough on Democrats in past cases (Meg Scott Phipps, Jim Black and Thomas Wright come to mind) is now willing to give Perdue a pass for what looks like a bargain price. After all, Chuck Winfrey, a minority in the 3-2 Democrat-Republican makeup of the board, at least tried to make the price higher. He proposed a $75,000 penalty but Democrats voted no because, they said, the maximum penalty allowed was $30,000.

But that penalty doesn't penalize Perdue's campaign very much. It reinforces the impression that there isn't much of a downside for failing to comply with the state's election laws. They require political candidates to publicly disclose where they're getting their money, what they're spending it on, and who's providing them with (sometimes) free airplane flights, called in-kind contributions.

These transparency laws are the fundamental underpinning of our regulation of partisan and nonpartisan elections. While the courts have often struck down attempts to control spending and fund-raising, they have upheld this basic right of the public to know who's buying - and flying - whom.

The public is entitled to presume in this case that the Perdue campaign didn't want the public to know all of those answers. And it's also entitled to presume that the elections board did, well, exactly what it did: tapped her on the wrist, imposed an easily-paid fine and called the case closed.