Wyoming again ranked 50th overall and
continues to have the weakest campaign
disclosure program in the country, with
particularly low ranks in the areas of
Campaign Disclosure Law and Disclosure
Content Accessibility.
Wyoming
law requires candidates to file once
in non-election years and once prior
to each election. Candidates must
report detailed information about contributors
giving more than $25, not including occupation
and employer. Last-minute contributions
are not disclosed until after the election. While
expenditure details have to be reported,
candidates do not disclose that information
until after the election, and subvendor
information is not reported. Wyoming
does not require the disclosure of independent
expenditures. There has been some
movement toward the establishment of an
electronic filing program for state candidates,
but a lack of funding has stalled these
plans.
The
Secretary of State’s web site
is one of three state-level disclosure
web sites in the country that contains
no campaign finance data at all. Access
to campaign finance reports in Wyoming
requires either visiting the Secretary
of State in person to view filings, or
requesting paper copies from that office. The
size of the state means that driving to
Cheyenne is not going to be an option for
many people, and they will instead need
to ask for copies to be mailed at a cost
of $.15 per page. Adding even summary
campaign finance information to its disclosure
web site would improve Wyoming’s
grade and, more importantly, would at least
give the state’s citizens access
to the total amounts raised and spent by
each candidate.
Wyoming
received an extremely low score in the
usability testing, because there are
no campaign finance records available
on the Internet, and that score contributed
to its low rank and grade in the Online
Contextual and Technical Usability category. The
Secretary of State does provide some information
about Wyoming’s disclosure requirements
and campaign finance restrictions online,
which can be found on the agency’s
web site in the “Wyoming Campaign
Guide.”
