California's
campaign finance disclosure program is better than those
in a majority of the other states. It has one of
the strongest campaign finance disclosure laws in the nation,
but weaknesses on its disclosure web site, present at the
time research was conducted, brought down its grade and
rank.
California
law requires candidates to file two or more reports in
non-election years and two reports before an election. Candidates
must disclose detailed information about contributors who give
$100 or more, including occupations and employers. Both
donors and candidates must report last-minute contributions prior
to an election. Candidates must file detailed expenditure
information for payments of $100 or more, and must report how
their subvendors spent payments of $500 or more. Independent
expenditures must be reported and last-minute independent expenditures
of $1,000 or more must be reported within 24 hours. All
statewide and legislative candidates who reach a $50,000
threshold are required to file electronically.
Campaign
finance information is available on California's web
site for all candidates who file electronically and it can
be browsed, sorted and downloaded. However, at the time of
the Project's research, California did not have searchable databases
of contributions or expenditures on its site and it was only
possible to browse reports for one candidate at a time. In
July 2003, the Secretary of State launched searchable databases
of contributions and expenditures on its web site. California
will be given credit for the databases in the next round
of disclosure grades.
The
state could make improvements to the usability of its
web site. From 1991 to 1998, the state provided very
good analyses of campaign financing trends in elections,
but publication of these reports ended after 1998. Reinstating
the campaign financing summary reports and posting them
online could improve the site. In addition, campaign
finance data and contextual information cannot be found
in the same place online. Currently, campaign finance
data can be found on the Secretary of State's site, while most
contextual information – including explanations of the state's
campaign finance restrictions and the text of the law – is
on the Fair Political Practices Commission's site. Despite
some of the weaknesses on its disclosure web site, California
did well in the usability testing. The testers were able to
find the disclosure web site within five minutes and four out
of six testers were able to find campaign finance information
for which they were looking.
