Ohio
does a great job of making campaign finance data accessible
to the public, and its ability to do so is in part due
to its mandatory electronic filing law. High scores
in both categories contribute to Ohio's high rank in
the study, which might have been even higher if it were not
for an average disclosure law and a web site that is lacking
in the area of Online Contextual and Technical Usability.
Ohio's
disclosure law requires candidates to file annual reports
in non-election years and two reports before each election. Details
about all contributions, except those under $25 that were collected
at political fundraising events, must be disclosed. Occupation
and employer information must be disclosed for contributors giving
over $100. Last-minute contributions of $2,500 or more
($500 or more for Supreme Court candidates) must be reported
within two business days, but this requirement does not apply
to legislative candidates. All expenditures (not including
subvendor details) must be reported, and for expenditures of
$25 or more a copy of the canceled check or receipt must be attached
to the report. Independent expenditures must be disclosed,
but there no last-minute independent expenditure reporting.
Electronic
filing of reports is mandatory if a candidate reaches
a threshold of $10,000, but legislative candidates can opt-out
until March 2004 by paying a data-entry fee. The Secretary
of State provides free web-based filing, and also accepts
filings via e-mail in an approved standard filing format.
The
Secretary of State's disclosure web site makes it easy
to research the campaign finance records of candidates
in the state. The
comprehensive site includes a database of contributions
with the option of searching on a number of key fields
including contributor's name, employer and zip code,
contribution date and amount. A
searchable database of expenditures is equally user-friendly
and rich in data; records in both systems go back to 1990
for statewide office candidates and 1995 for state legislative
candidates. The
agency's unique Campaign Finance File Transfer Page was
developed “to allow users to obtain large sets of data
faster than the normal query process” and offers pre-queried
files — such
as all contributions by all candidates in a given year — that
are updated daily. Detailed
and helpful instructions answer most of the questions site
visitors might have about either the databases or the pre-queried
files.
While
it can serve as a model in the area of data accessibility,
the contextual usability of Ohio's disclosure web site
could be improved. Some things are done well; for example, the
site uses clear terminology, provides a good explanation (called “data
history”) of which reports and data are online, and adequately
describes campaign finance restrictions and disclosure
requirements in the state. However, there is no overall summary information
comparing total amounts raised and spent by different filers,
so it is difficult to get a good idea of how one candidate's
fundraising might compare to the rest, without spending a lot
of time downloading and analyzing the data. Also missing
from the report indexes and reports themselves are the
timeframes of each report (which are described elsewhere
on the site, but would be more helpful if featured with the data.)
Despite
some of the site's shortcomings, Ohio did well in the
usability testing. Some researchers, however, had difficulty
locating the disclosure agency's site from the state homepage,
and some didn't make it past the File Transfer page to the
searchable databases. In years past, the site was found
to be extremely slow, which happily is no longer the case for
most site visitors; those with older computers or slower connections
may still find it hard to access the data.
