For
Immediate Release
on Wednesday, September 17, 2003
For
additional information, contact: Saskia Mills or Rachel Zenner
at (530) 750-7650; info@calvoter.org
Sept.
17, 2003 -- Thirty-three states' campaign disclosure
programs received passing grades according to Grading State
Disclosure, a new, comprehensive, comparative study of candidate
campaign finance disclosure laws and practices in the
50 states. The report is online at:
www.campaigndisclosure.org/gradingstate/
Washington
State received top honors for its program, which ranked
number one in the nation, followed by Illinois and Massachusetts.
Seventeen states' disclosure programs failed the assessment,
which was conducted by the Campaign Disclosure Project,
a collaboration of the California Voter Foundation, the Center
for Governmental Studies and the UCLA School of Law. The Project
seeks to bring greater transparency and accountability to money
in state politics and is supported by The Pew Charitable
Trusts.
“While
there are signs of progress and some innovative practices
in states across the country, our study found that a
vast majority of the states still have significant room
to improve their campaign finance disclosure,” said Kim
Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, which
produced the study. “Better
campaign disclosure is needed to ensure that the public
can follow the money and make informed voting choices
as well as more easily determine which groups may be
receiving greater access in the halls of state government.”
The Campaign
Disclosure Project evaluated four areas of campaign finance
disclosure: state campaign disclosure laws, which
set the disclosure requirements about what campaign data
must be publicly disclosed; electronic filing programs, which
enable states to publish accurate, timely and comprehensive
data online; the degree to which the public can access campaign
finance information; and the usability of state disclosure
web sites.
Of the
passing states, only two received grades in the A or B range. The top-ranked state, Washington, received an
A- and the second-ranked state, Illinois, received a B. Among
the study's significant findings:
-
Twenty-nine
states require donors' occupation and employer data
to be disclosed; five states require only employer;
two states require only occupation; and 14 states do not
require either occupation or employer data for donors to
be disclosed.
-
Forty
states require independent expenditures made to support
or oppose a candidate to be disclosed, but only 23
states require such expenditures that are made immediately
before an election to be disclosed prior to the election.
-
Twenty
states require candidates for state office to file
disclosure reports in an electronic format, while 16
states have voluntary electronic filing programs and 14 states
have no electronic filing.
-
Twenty-seven
state disclosure web sites feature online databases
of campaign contributions; 17 sites offer databases
of expenditures.
Each
state was assessed, graded and ranked for its overall performance
as well as its performance in each of the four grading
categories. States
across the country performed best in the Campaign Disclosure
Law category, with 38 states receiving passing grades and 12
states failing. Nineteen states passed the Electronic
Filing assessment while 31 failed. Twenty-six states passed
in the Disclosure Content Accessibility category and 24 failed. Twenty-three
state disclosure web sites received a passing grade in
Online Contextual and Technical Usability, while 27 failed the
assessment.
“We
were surprised to find that states that performed well
in one or two of the categories, often performed very poorly
in the other categories,” said Bob Stern, president of the Center
for Governmental Studies.
Grades
were based on criteria created by the Campaign Disclosure Project
partners, the Project's Advisory Board and a panel of expert
judges, who also assisted with the grading process. The
Project set a high, but not impossible, standard for state campaign
finance disclosure programs. Efforts were made to balance
the concerns of practitioners and government officials
against the public's need for timely, complete and effective
disclosure.
Assessments
of each state were based on legal research, web site visits
and research, web site testing by outside evaluators and responses
from state disclosure agency staff and activists working on
campaign financing at the state level. The
legal research was conducted from July 2002 through March 2003
and was based on state laws as of December 31, 2002; web site
research was conducted from January to June 2003. State
grades are a reflection of the state legislature and governor,
who are responsible for enacting and funding state campaign disclosure
laws, as well as the work of the state agency, such as the Secretary
of State, that is responsible for implementing laws and making
campaign data available to the public. The Campaign Disclosure
Project will repeat the assessment and issue new grades
to measure progress in future years.
“For
thirty years states have experimented with campaign disclosure,” said
Daniel Lowenstein, professor at the UCLA School of Law. “But
many states
have
fallen behind the rapid changes in technology. The
role of money is
sometimes hidden from the public or less quickly available
than it should
be. Through
the grades, the Project hopes to encourage states to make
progress toward better disclosure.”
The
Grading State Disclosure web site features the 2003 report,
an assessment of each of the fifty states, a U.S. map
of the states color-coded by grade, comparison charts,
and a page of campaign disclosure statistics. Click
here for a chart of the 50 states along with their disclosure
rank and grade.
For
additional information, contact: Saskia Mills or
Rachel Zenner at (530) 750-7650; info@calvoter.org
For further
information about the Project's legal research, please contact:
Joe Doherty, UCLA School of Law: 310-206-2675; Doherty@mail.law.ucla.edu
Bob Stern, Center for Governmental Studies: 310-470-6590 x117; stern@cgs.org
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