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The State of Disclosure in Indiana
Indiana ranked 27th and earned a C+ in 2008,
its highest grade in any of the five Grading
State Disclosure assessments. Indiana moved
up eight places in the usability category and
jumped from a D+ in 2007 to a B- on the strength
of a stronger usability test performance in
2008.
Indiana
earned a C- in the disclosure law category
and ranked 39th in this area again in 2008.
Candidates must report detailed information
about contributors giving at least $100, though
employer data is not disclosed and occupation
data is not reported until a donor gives $1,000
or more in a year. Campaign expenditures over
$100 are disclosed, and include subvendor details.
Independent expenditure reporting is not required,
a major weakness in the law. Indiana’s
electronic filing program ranked 25th and earned
a C in 2008. The program is mandatory for all
statewide candidates and voluntary for legislative
candidates, 30 percent of which took advantage
of this option in the last election.
Indiana
performed best in the Disclosure Content
Accessibility category, earning a B+ again
in 2008. The Secretary of State’s site
offers well-designed, searchable databases
of contributions and expenditures that include
both electronically-filed records and paper-filed
disclosure records that have been data-entered
by agency staff. The databases offer numerous
search fields (contributor employer data is
not disclosed in Indiana, and is therefore
not searchable) and allow users to easily sort
and download their results. Candidate reports
are presented in a clean, informative index
that summarizes data from the candidate’s
most recently filed report. As noted in previous
Grading State Disclosure studies, a weakness
in Indiana’s
program is the length of time required for
the data-entry process, which takes one to
two weeks to complete.
Indiana
made large gains in the web site usability
category in 2008, moving from a D+ to a B-
with a much stronger usability test performance
than in past years. Testers were able to complete
the test more easily than in 2007, and reported
greater levels of confidence with the site.
The Secretary of State’s site contains
many user-friendly pieces of information, such
as listings of candidates, an excellent description
of which candidates have reports available
online, and instructions for accessing the
data available on the site. Additionally, while
most states simply note whether an entire report
has been amended, Indiana’s databases
highlight individual transactions that have
been amended. To provide a clear view of campaign
financing trends, the site could be enhanced
with tools for easily comparing the totals
raised and spent by competing candidates or
in different election cycles.
→ Quick
Fix: Compile individual candidate
summaries into a single document, making
it easier for site visitors to quickly
compare fundraising and spending between
candidates.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: The index of a candidate’s
reports includes key information, such
as the reporting period and the date
the report was filed, as well as a summary
of the contents of the most recently
filed report. View
image
 Disclosure Agency: Secretary of State
Disclosure
Web Site: http://www.in.gov/sos
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