Ranked
at 21, Georgia's campaign finance disclosure program
is in the top half of all states. However, its overall
grade of a D+ shows that it has significant room for improvement,
particularly in the areas of Disclosure Content Accessibility
and Online Contextual and Technical Usability.
One
of Georgia's biggest strengths is its campaign finance disclosure
law, which is one of the best in the nation. Candidates
are required to file semi-annual statements in non-election years
and more than three statements before each election. A
contributor's name, address, occupation, and employer must be
disclosed for any contribution of $101 or more. Candidates
must report details about all expenditures of $101 or more, but
subvendor information is not required. Independent expenditures
and last-minute independent expenditures greater than $1,000
must be reported. Last-minute contributions of more than
$1,000 are also required to be reported prior to an election. Georgia
has a mandatory electronic filing program for statewide candidates
who reach a threshold of $20,000 and a voluntary electronic filing
program for legislative candidates. On January 1, 2003,
electronic filing became mandatory for all legislative candidates
who reach a threshold of $10,000. This change in the law
will be reflected in the next round of disclosure grades.
Georgia
does a fair job of making campaign finance data available
to the public and has significant room for improvement. The
Secretary of State posts a combination of electronically filed
and paper filed campaign finance reports on its web site, but
it can take up to a week before they are online. The web
site features a searchable database of contributions from the
electronically filed reports, but it is only possible to search
by the name of the contributor. The state does not offer
a searchable database of expenditures or downloadable campaign
finance reports.
The
usability of the web site could also be improved. The
site does not provide any overview information about campaign
financing in Georgia and does not clearly label campaign finance
reporting periods. The explanation of the state's campaign
finance law and the terminology used on the site could also
be better. In addition, it is hard to find the disclosure site
from the state's home page and the site may not work well with
an older computer or a dial-up modem. Georgia's performance
in the usability testing was poor, with only two of six usability
testers able to locate the campaign disclosure page.
