Florida
ranked in the top ten in the study even though it only received
an overall grade of a C. Its strengths lie in
its campaign disclosure law and accessibility to campaign finance
information. Improvements could be made to its electronic
filing program and the contextual and technical usability
of its web site.
Florida
law requires candidates to file quarterly statements in non-election
years and two statements before each election. For
each contribution, details about contributors are required to
be reported and a contributor's occupation must be disclosed
for contributions of more than $100. Candidates do not
report information about a contributor's employer. Candidates
must report details, including subvendor information, about all
expenditures. Independent expenditures must be reported,
but last-minute independent expenditures are not disclosed before
the election. Florida has a mandatory electronic filing
program, but this mandate is automatically waived by the
Division of Elections for candidates who state that they
are unable to file electronically.
Florida
does a very good job of making campaign finance information
available to the public. All campaign finance data is
posted on the disclosure agency's web site within one week
of being filed. Since campaign finance data is either
electronically filed or data-entered by agency staff, all the
data is available in the searchable databases of contributions
and expenditures on the site. Florida's databases also have
a unique feature in which it is possible for site users to
search by
“name sounds like”. In addition, there is an option to
search for the total amount raised by an individual candidate
in a particular election year, and an option to download search
results.
The
contextual usability of Florida's site could be better, partly
because it does not offer complete reports for individual candidates
that can be browsed. The lack of browsable
reports means it is not possible to see when amendments have
been made to campaign finance reports. The site does not
offer a list of committees with the total amounts raised and
spent by each candidate in recent elections. The usability
testing also reflected the poor usability of the site.
