NEIL BRESLIN, ONLINE.(MAIN)

If anyone is interested in who is contributing to the campaign of Neil Breslin, the Democrat-Conservative seeking to oust Republican incumbent state Sen. Michael J. Hoblock Jr., all that is necessary is to go to the personal computer and lock onto Internet.

There (at http://global2000.net/democrats/breslin/ with a button that points to the finances available at http://crisny.org:8880/ows-campaign) one will find the contributors to the Breslin campaign by name or organization. But don't look for anyone else. No other New York candidate for office has posted his or her list of contributors on the Internet.

Yet the Internet, as Mr. Breslin has correctly explained, provides citizens with a more meaningful access to contributor information than is currently available -- or, indeed, that would be available under the electronic filing requirement bill that failed to get through the Legislature this year.

That bill, sponsored in the Senate by Senator Hoblock, would have required politicians to file their campaign finances electronically, with the results available on computer disc at the Board of Elections. That, of course, would be a considerable improvement over the existing system, under which an interested citizen must also go to the Board of Elections address, but then must pay 25 cents per copied page from a list of contributors that is not alphabetized.

Mr. Breslin, thus, has opened the books on his campaign. It's a nice gesture, but it is only that. No campaign disclosure system can work if it is voluntary. That would defeat its very purpose since the only persons who would then facilitate an examination of their finances would be those who felt they had nothing to hide.

What is needed is the electronically filing requirement that was left foundering in the last session. It would make such data available on computer disc at the Board of Elections -- where it must be, since not everyone has a home computer. But such data should also be placed on the Internet -- either by the candidates themselves, as Mr. Breslin has done, or by the Board of Elections.

As Mr. Breslin has noted, only then will the data be meaningfully available to most everyone.