North Carolina's campaign disclosure program ranks in the top
25 states in the nation, in large part due to the strength of
its disclosure law. The state's lack of an electronic
filing requirement for legislative candidates and its poor showing
in the area of web site usability, bring down its overall grade
and rank.
The state has a fairly comprehensive campaign disclosure law,
requiring quarterly filing of campaign finance statements in
election years, and semi-annual filing in non-election years. Candidates
must collect and report detailed information about contributors,
including occupation and employer for those who give more than
$100. Last-minute contributions of $1,000 or more must
be reported within 48 hours. Expenditures greater than
$50, including subvendor details for media expenditures, must
be disclosed. Independent expenditures over $100 must
be disclosed at least ten days before an election, but there
is no last-minute independent expenditure reporting. Electronic
filing is mandatory for state candidates above the $5,000 threshold,
and voluntary for legislative candidates; filing software is
available for free from the State Board of Elections.
North Carolina has significant room for improvement in its efforts
to make campaign finance information accessible to the public. It
is one of six states with mandatory electronic filing that does
not offer searchable databases of campaign finance information. Instead
it offers browsable reports, which cannot be sorted or searched
online. Another barrier to accessibility is in the display
of the records on the Board's web site, with several entry points
for campaign finance information and two completely different
systems for looking up the data. Site visitors are likely
to question whether they have seen everything available on the
site, assuming they can see the records at all and do not have
trouble using the proprietary report-viewing software.
Technical
usability problems go beyond the confusion of the two systems
for looking at campaign finance reports. To begin with, someone
who doesn't know that campaign finance information is the responsibility
of the Board of Elections might find it difficult to locate
the agency's web site from the state web portal, and when they
do get there, may run into confusing terminology that makes
navigating the site difficult. For example, a section called “contribution/expenditures”,
where one might expect to find actual campaign contributions
and expenditures, instead contains a section called “contribution
and expenditure limits”.
The state does slightly better providing contextual information
on the disclosure web site, but again, could improve. From
1990-1998 the agency published an analysis of campaign finance
activity for each election cycle and has archived these analyses
online; but for some reason, similar overview reports are not
available for elections held since 1998. The result is
a lack of information about recent campaign finance trends that
might help citizens grasp the larger picture of state-level disclosure
in North Carolina. (Downloadable itemized campaign finance
data is available going back to 1992, which is nice, but is not
a substitute for a good overview report.) A better
explanation of exactly what data is on the site, and more in-depth
information about campaign finance restrictions and disclosure
requirements, would also improve North Carolina's grade in web
site usability.
