Although
it received a passing grade, Missouri's campaign finance disclosure
program has significant room for improvement. While
it has one of the strongest campaign finance disclosure
laws in the country, Missouri's poor performance in Disclosure
Content Accessibility and web site usability brings down
its overall grade.
Missouri
law requires candidates to file quarterly reports in non-election
years and one report before each election. Contributor
information, including occupation and employer, must be disclosed
for all contributions greater than $100. Last-minute contributions
greater than $250, received within the last twelve days prior
to an election, must be reported within 48 hours of being received. Details
about expenditures greater than $100 must also be disclosed,
but subvendor information is not required to be reported. Electronic
filing is mandatory for statewide candidates and voluntary
for legislative candidates.
Missouri
does not make campaign finance data very accessible to the
public. Although Missouri has electronic filing,
it does not have databases of contributions or expenditures online
and there is no sorting or downloading of data available. There
are scanned reports available, but they can be difficult
to view because the site requires the use of proprietary
software, called Acorde, which does not work on some computers.
Missouri
could also improve the usability of its web site. There
is some good contextual information on the site, including
some historical campaign finance trend information and
an explanation of the campaign finance laws in the state.
Unfortunately, the campaign finance overview information
is not available for elections that were held after 1999.
It is also difficult to determine which campaign finance
records can be found on the site. The technical usability of
the site has some weaknesses, including a lack of
instructions about how to use it and poor searching and
navigating functions on the main state web site that make it
hard to find the disclosure agency's site. Missouri's campaign
disclosure site failed the usability test. Some usability testers
were able to locate the Missouri Ethics web site, but
could not find or access any data on contributions.
