Wyoming’s
campaign disclosure program was again
found to be the worst in the country,
with continuing poor performances in
all areas of the study and particularly
low rankings in the Campaign Disclosure
Law and Disclosure Content Accessibility
categories.
Under
Wyoming’s disclosure law,
which ranked 48th in the nation, candidates
report the name and address of contributors
giving over $25, but not their occupation,
employer or cumulative amount donated.
Last-minute contributions are not reported
until after Election Day. Candidates
do not file information about campaign
expenditures until after the election,
and even then are not required to disclose
information about subvendors or accrued
expenses. The law does not require the
reporting of independent expenditures,
and its enforcement provisions are also
lacking, particularly in the areas of
desk review and field auditing. Though
Wyoming law allows for the electronic filing
of campaign reports, the legislature still
has not appropriated the funds necessary
for the Secretary of State’s office
to develop an e-filing program.
The
lack of electronic filing is one reason
Wyoming still does not have any campaign
finance data on its disclosure web site,
but that alone should not stop the state
from publishing records online. Ten
other states without electronic filing
either scan reports or data-enter the records
to create online access to candidates’ filings.
As it is, the only way to view campaign
disclosure reports in Wyoming is to request
copies of them from the Secretary of State’s
office at $.15 per page or visit that agency
in person to browse the paper filings.
Providing access to records only on paper
is not enough to ensure the public’s
ability to easily “follow the money” in
Wyoming, and is the reason for the state’s
F in the Disclosure Content Accessibility
category.
The
Secretary of State’s web site
features some useful contextual information—including
a campaign guide that details reporting
deadlines and other disclosure requirements,
and provides information about contribution
limits and other campaign finance restrictions—but
these resources are not enough to raise
Wyoming’s grade for Online Contextual
and Technical Usability above an F. The
web site does not contain a list of the
total amounts raised and spent by all state-level
candidates, something that is weighted
heavily in this category, and the state’s
usability test score was very low due to
the lack of campaign records online.
→ Quick
Fix: Post even
a small amount of campaign finance data
on the Internet, such as summary totals
for gubernatorial or other high-profile
candidates.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: Lists
of candidate committees on the disclosure
web site go back to 1998. View image
