Although
Oregon has a strong disclosure law and mandatory electronic
filing of campaign finance reports, it received a barely
passing grade. Oregon's performance was poorest in Disclosure
Content Accessibility and web site usability.
Oregon's
disclosure law ranked sixth in the study and requires
candidates to file two statements before each election, plus
one statement in non-election years. Candidates must disclose
information about contributors who give $50 or more, including
their occupations and employers. Last-minute contributions
of more than $500 and independent expenditures of more than $1,000
must be reported before the election. All expenditures
must be disclosed and some subvendor information is required. Oregon
requires electronic filing for any campaign that reaches a threshold
of $50,000, but this mandate is waived if the filer submits a
form stating they are unable to file reports in an electronic
format. Starting in 2004, these waivers will no longer
be permitted.
While
the Secretary of State does post some campaign finance
data on its disclosure web site, no significant improvements
have been made since electronic filing began several years
ago and large holes in the online information remain. The
site offers an HTML display of summary figures raised and spent
by all state level candidates, for all election-related reports
going back at least a decade. However, the only itemized
contribution and expenditure data on the web site (displayed
as scanned-in images) is either from late contribution reports
or from reports filed during the legislative session; with a
legislature that normally meets just six months out of every
two years, there isn't much information there. Why the
agency posts the details contained in these reports, but
not the details of regular election filings, is unclear
but may be related to what agency staff described as inadequate
funding for its electronic filing and online disclosure program.
Contextual
information on the Secretary of State's web site is good
but could be expanded to give the public a better overall understanding
of campaign disclosure in Oregon. A comprehensive
campaign finance manual on the site describes Oregon's disclosure
requirements and campaign finance restrictions, and is especially
helpful in conjunction with the full text of the state's disclosure
law, which is also on the site. What's missing though,
is a simple list of all candidates and how much money they
raised and spent in each election, which should be easy
to compile from the individual candidate reports on the site
that already contain those summary figures.
Technical usability scores for the agency's web site were
also low and usability testers had trouble finding campaign finance
data for the current governor, further indicating room for improvement
in site design and user-friendliness.
