Despite its C grade, Maryland's overall ranking of twelve reflects
the relative strength of its campaign finance disclosure program. While
it ranks among the top states in Electronic Filing and Disclosure
Content Accessibility, Maryland's disclosure law and web site
usability have significant weaknesses and bring down its overall
grade.
Maryland law requires candidates to file annual reports in non-election
years and one report before an election. Detailed information
must be disclosed for all contributions greater than $51, but
a contributor's occupation and employer do not have to be reported. Last-minute
contributions do not have to be disclosed before an election. Details
about all expenditures, except subvendor information, must be
reported. In addition to the usual expenditure information,
the number of the check used to pay the expenditure must be reported. Independent
expenditures are not required to be disclosed. Electronic
filling is required for statewide and legislative candidates
who reach a threshold of $5,000.
Maryland does a very good job of making its campaign finance
data accessible to the public. The state makes all campaign
finance data available in searchable databases of contributions
and expenditures on its web site within twelve hours of being
filed. State Board of Elections staff data enter information
from all paper filed records. The state could improve
the contextual information with clearer terminology. Maryland
had a fair performance in the usability testing with three out
of six testers finding the disclosure site, but none was able
to find summary data.
Although
improvements can be made to Maryland's web site, it does
have some interesting and innovative features that are worth
highlighting. The “Campaign Fund
Report Statistics” page gives useful overview information
including the combined total contributed to all committees,
broken down by in-state and out-of-state contributors. Another
unusual feature is the publication of campaign treasurers' e-mail
addresses in the HTML display of campaign finance records. Contact
information for treasurers can help people seeking answers to
inconsistencies and irregularities in data filed by candidates,
but many states remove this information from their online records.
Finally, Maryland offers positive encouragement to site
visitors with the note, “Feel
free to experiment; you won't break anything.”
