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The State of Disclosure in California
California's very strong disclosure program
earned a B+ again in 2007 and achieved the
second highest overall ranking with gains made
in the Online Contextual and Technical Usability
category.
California’s
disclosure law ranks first overall, with
strengths such as the timely reporting of
last-minute contributions and independent
expenditures, and comprehensive auditing
provisions contributing to the state’s
A grade. Candidates are required to provide
detailed information on donors who give $100
or more, including occupation and employer
data. While campaigns must report expenditures
made by subvendors, a weakness of the law found
in this assessment is that campaigns are not
required to report the date a payment is made
to a vendor. Electronic filing is mandatory
for all state-level candidates who reach a
$50,000 threshold. While a new, free, web-based
filing system was introduced in 2005, funding
issues accounted for a slight drop in the state’s
2007 Electronic Filing grade.
California
again earned an A and a top-five ranking
in the Disclosure Content Accessibility category
in 2007. All electronically-filed reports
are available on the state’s “Cal-Access” web
site going back to 2000, with new reports becoming
available online immediately upon filing. Along
with browsable PDF versions of disclosure reports,
the site also features searchable databases
of contributions and expenditures. A weakness
found on the Cal-Access site is that the amended
disclosure reports replace the original reports
in a candidate’s filing history.
California’s grade for Online Contextual
and Technical Usability improved from a D+
to a C as usability testers found the site
more understandable and were able to more confidently
find and extract campaign finance data than
in 2005. California also strengthened the contextual
information online by posting campaign contribution
limits on the Cal-Access site that had previously
been found only on the state’s Fair Political
Practices Commission site. Even with these
improvements, the usability of California’s
disclosure site still ranks only as average
in this assessment. The Secretary of State’s
office is planning to overhaul the disclosure
site and could make additional improvements
by publishing an online user’s guide.
→ Quick
Fix: Provide better visual clues
for accessing and searching the online databases
by changing the label from “Advanced
Search” to “Search Contributions
and Expenditures”. This impressive
feature on the site could be easily missed
by site visitors due to the inconspicuous
placement of the link on the main page,
and a label that might be intimidating
to novice users.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: “Candidates & Elected
Officials” page provides options
for accessing browsable lists of candidates,
incumbents and links to electronic filers’ reports
for all elections held since 2000. View
image
 Disclosure Agency: Secretary of State
Disclosure
Web Site: http://www.sos.ca.gov
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