While
South Dakota has significant room for improvement in
its efforts to make campaign finance data accessible to the
public, it does a good job of providing the public with contextual
information and a usable Web site. Its near-last rank
in the disclosure law category and lack of electronic filing,
though, result in an F overall.
South
Dakota's campaign disclosure law ranked 49th, ahead
of only neighboring North Dakota. The law requires candidates
to file one statement annually, plus one statement before
each election. Candidates must report details about
contributors who give $100 or more, including information
about a contributor's employer, but not occupation. Last-minute
contributions of $500 or more must be disclosed within
48 hours. Expenditures are reported, but detailed subvendor
information is not required. Independent
expenditures are not reported.
The
state's official disclosure web site contains up-to-date
itemized campaign finance data for all statewide and
state legislative candidates for the most recent election
cycle, plus summary data going back to 1994. Unfortunately,
all of the itemized records are in the form of scanned
images of paper-filed reports — some
handwritten — which means there is little opportunity for
meaningful analysis of the data.
South
Dakota offers good contextual information on its disclosure
web site, including an explanation of campaign finance
laws and reporting requirements, a comprehensive list
of candidates from the most recent election, and a format that
helps people determine which reports have been filed and are
available online. Clear
terminology throughout the web site enhances its usability. The
state could improve contextual usability by posting campaign
finance report summaries for more recent elections on its
disclosure site — currently the site features reports showing
total amounts raised and spent by state candidates from 1994-2000,
but similar reports do not exist (at least not online)
for the 2002 election. The
clear labeling of disclosure reporting periods, both in
the index of a candidate's reports and within the report
itself, would also boost South Dakota's grade in this category.
South
Dakota received a near-perfect score for technical usability. The
Secretary of State's web site is easy to navigate, and
the state did very well in the usability testing; all testers
quickly found South Dakota's disclosure web site from the state
homepage and easily located individual contributor data.
