Since
the early 1990's, local, state and federal disclosure agencies
have been developing and fine tuning electronic filing
programs and moving toward Internet disclosure of campaign
finance reports, in an effort to improve public access
to campaign disclosure data. In 1999, the California
Voter Foundation (CVF) conducted a nationwide survey of states'
progress toward Internet disclosure of money in politics,
examining efforts to require and implement electronic filing
of campaign disclosure reports, and evaluating the quality
and scope of state agency campaign finance disclosure web
sites.
The Campaign
Disclosure Project's 2003 “Grading State
Disclosure” survey builds and expands upon CVF's 1999
Digital Sunlight Awards research, to include an examination
of each state's disclosure laws and a more in-depth look
at the content, quality and usability of state disclosure
web sites. Not only is the 2003 Grading State Disclosure
criteria more detailed than that used in the Digital Sunlight
Awards study, but the bar has also been set higher with increased
expectations of what government agencies and legislatures
can do to make campaign finance information more accessible
to the public online.
While
the two studies differ in a number of ways, there are some
basic questions that were asked in both. Comparing
the answers to these questions provides a good overview of
how much progress has been made nationwide in state campaign
finance disclosure programs over the past four years.
Electronic Filing Programs By
1999, 17 states had enacted laws to require electronic
filing by statewide and/or legislative candidates. Seven
of those states – Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana,
Maryland, New York, and Washington – had mandatory electronic
filing programs up and running by 1999. The other
ten were in the process of phasing in mandatory electronic
filing requirements, often by first implementing voluntary
programs. Those states are Arizona, California,
Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon,
Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. Another 15 states
were offering voluntary electronic filing or were making
plans to do so in the near future. Eighteen states
had made no progress toward electronic filing at that time. The 2003 research shows that each of the ten states that
had enacted but had not implemented a mandatory electronic
filing law by 1999, did in fact establish an electronic filing
program and generally stayed on schedule for phased-in implementation
(although states in which electronic filing requirements
were enacted via the initiative process were less likely
to implement programs on time).
Implementation
appears to have been successful for the most part. Despite
earlier concerns that electronic filing would be an onerous
task for filers, no states have repealed their electronic
filing mandates since 1999. However,
three states – Florida, Oregon and Texas – continue
to provide “opt-out” provisions
in the law that allow candidates to file reports on paper
by submitting statements saying they are not able to file
electronically.
In addition
to the states that have implemented existing requirements
since 1999, Georgia, Michigan, Rhode Island and South Carolina
have passed new laws mandating electronic filing, and Colorado,
Delaware and Nevada now have voluntary electronic filing
programs. South Carolina's electronic
filing requirement was signed into law in June 2003, so its
program is just getting underway. Many states have
generally expanded and improved their electronic filing
programs over the last four years as well. Thirteen
states have made no progress toward electronic filing since
1999: Alabama, Arkansas,
Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North
Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia
and Wyoming. Campaign Disclosure Web Sites Over
the past four years, progress toward improving public access
to campaign finance information through state disclosure
web sites has been mixed, but generally the states are
moving in the right direction. Most
encouraging, is the fact that today every state disclosure
agency at least has a presence on the Internet, as opposed
to 1999, when several agencies did not have web sites
at all.
Another
improvement is an increase in the number of states providing
campaign finance data online. In 1999, many
states provided little or no campaign finance data on the
Internet, but today just three states – Montana, South
Carolina, and Wyoming – have no data on their web sites. South
Carolina's new electronic filing requirement will help
move that state quickly toward online disclosure of campaign
finance data. Several states that had limited
or no data on the web in 1999, now have summary data or
are making images of scanned paper disclosure reports available
online. These
states include Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, North
Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West
Virginia, Wisconsin and Tennessee. A handful
of states that previously scanned and published disclosure
reports online, but provided no way to search that data,
today have searchable campaign contribution databases. Georgia,
Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, and Washington have all added
contribution databases to their web sites since CVF last
evaluated those sites. Several
states expanded the scope and type of campaign finance
data accessible online, and others improved the functionality
of their databases and overall usability of their web sites. For
example, in 1999, Arizona was suppressing information about
contributors' occupation and employer from its online display
of campaign finance records; now that information is available. Illinois'
online database used to feature only contributions of $500
or more, but now features all itemized contributions. Massachusetts'
online database featured only contributions to statewide
candidates in 1999; now it includes contributions to legislative
candidates as well. Examples
of improvement in web site functionality and usability
include Ohio's online contributions database, which was
incredibly slow and frustrating to use in 1999, but now
is much faster and more user-friendly. Alaska improved in this area
as well. In 1999, the only option for viewing data
on Alaska's disclosure web site was to search a contributions
database; now the public can also browse lists of all contributions
contained in individual disclosure reports.
Unfortunately,
some states have made little or no progress in terms of
accessibility to campaign finance data on the Internet,
including two states that were previously on the cutting-edge
of online campaign finance disclosure. Hawaii
and Louisiana – whose databases were designed by the same
technology consultant and were at one time considered among
the best available – have been surpassed in this area by
other states whose newer databases are more user-friendly
and technologically advanced. Although Hawaii's
overall rank in the 2003 Grading State Disclosure study
is high, its web site received a failing grade for contextual
and technical usability; Louisiana, a “Digital Sunlight
Award” recipient, received Ds for both content accessibility
and usability in the 2003 study. States
that show the least amount of improvement in the areas
of electronic filing and accessibility to disclosure data
on the Internet include Alabama, Montana, and Wyoming. States
that show the most overall improvement include Delaware,
Georgia, Maryland and Rhode Island.
Though
it varies widely from state to state and there are some
that still lag behind, overall the 50 states have succeeded
in moving more campaign finance data into the “digital
sunlight” and have made progress toward better electronic
filing programs and more comprehensive electronic filing
mandates. |
