Grading State Disclosure Criteria was written
and developed by the California Voter Foundation in consultation
with the Grading State Disclosure judges, the Campaign Disclosure
Project Advisory Board and project partners. 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 very important need for timely, complete and
effective disclosure. The criteria used for this first
round of grading will be applied in subsequent years, so
that changes and improvements in state level campaign disclosure
can be measured over time.
Four
areas of performance make-up the grading criteria: Campaign
Disclosure Laws; Electronic Filing Programs; Disclosure Content
Accessiblity; and Online Contextual and Technical Usabillity.
The strength of a state's campaign disclosure law is worth
40 percent of its grade; the quality of electronic filing
is worth ten percent of the grade; and accessibility to
data and web site usability are each worth 25 percent.
A 300-point system was developed to score each state. Points
were awarded based on a state's performance solely in the
area of state-level candidate disclosure. Ranks were
assigned based on points, and in several instances one or
more states tied for a particular rank. This is especially
the case in the Electronic Filing category, where multiple
states were tied for both first and last place. Grades
are based on each state's total point score, utilizing the
following grading percentages:
A: 90 - 100 % (Excellent)
B: 80 - 89 % (Good)
C: 70 - 79 % (Average)
D: 60 - 69 % (Below Average/Passing)
F: 59 % or lower (Failing)
In addition to an overall grade and rank, the states have
also been graded and ranked in each of the four grading categories. In
order to better measure progress over time, the grades are
not curved, weighted or scaled.
|
