Although
Nebraska has a relatively strong campaign finance disclosure
law, its overall campaign finance disclosure program is very
weak. The state performed
poorly in Electronic Filing, Disclosure Content Accessibility
and Online Contextual and Technical Usability.
Under
Nebraska law, candidates must file one campaign finance statement
in non-election years and two before each election. Details
for contributions greater than $250 must be reported, but a contributor's
occupation and employer are not required to be disclosed. Last-minute
contributions of $1,000 or more must be reported within two days. Details
must be disclosed for expenditures greater than $250, but subvendor
information is not required. Independent expenditures
of $250 or more must be disclosed, and last-minute independent
expenditures (of $1,000 or more) must be reported within two
days. Nebraska has no electronic filing program for statewide
or legislative candidates.
Nebraska
does a poor job of making campaign finance data accessible
to the public. Even though state agency staff enter all
campaign finance records into a database in their office, there
are no searchable databases of contributions or expenditures
featured on the web site and it is not possible to sort or download
the data. It is possible to view campaign finance records
on the site in a static form. Since the state goes to
the trouble of data entering all campaign finance records,
it is unfortunate that there are no features on the site
that allow users to manipulate the data.
The
usability of the web site could also be improved. There
is some good contextual information on the site, including an
explanation of state campaign finance restrictions and a list
of candidates for recent or upcoming elections. The site
does not list disclosure reporting periods in each campaign finance
report and does not clearly explain which campaign finance reports
are available on the web site. It also does not retain
original campaign finance reports online once amendments
have been posted.
In
terms of technical usability, the site is difficult to
find from the state homepage, in part because the name
of the agency doesn't necessarily indicate that it would
be the right place to locate campaign finance information.
There could also be clearer terminology on the disclosure
site. For example, information about itemized expenditures
has the label “miscellaneous transactions” rather than “expenditures”.
Despite some of its shortcomings, Nebraska's site did
well in the usability testing.
