Washington
has the best campaign finance disclosure program in the
country. With an overall grade of an A-, there
are some minor improvements that can be made to the program,
particularly in web site usability. Nonetheless, Washington's
program is a good model for other states to follow.
Washington's
far-reaching campaign disclosure law ranked number one
in the study. The state requires candidates to file
monthly reports year-round, and two additional reports before
each election. Candidates disclose information about contributors
who give more than $25, including occupation and employer for
contributions greater than $100. Last-minute contributions
of $1,000 or more must be reported by the donor within 24 hours
and the candidate within 48 hours. Expenditures of $50
or more must be disclosed and subvendor information is required. Independent
expenditures of $1,000 or more occurring within 21 days of an
election have to be reported within 24 hours; otherwise independent
expenditures must be disclosed within five days of being made. Washington
mandates electronic filing for any candidate that reaches
a threshold of $25,000 and provides campaigns with free
filing software and technical assistance.
Washington
does an excellent job of making campaign finance data
accessible to the public — it received an A+ in this
section of the criteria. The state fulfills requests
for paper copies of campaign finance records the same day an
order is placed and charges a very reasonable price of ten
cents per page. It
is also possible for the public to obtain campaign finance
records on CD-Rom or Zip disk for ten dollars or less depending
on the format requested. Campaign finance reports are
posted to the web site as soon as they are received and are
a combination of scanned-in and electronically filed documents. The
site features contribution and expenditure databases of
electronically filed records that are searchable across
multiple fields.
The
contextual information on Washington's web site is also
good, but there is room for improvement in this category. The
state provides an overview of campaign financing trends, explains
campaign finance restrictions, describes which reports are and
are not on the web site, and posts both original filings and amended
reports. The site could be improved with the inclusion of
reporting periods in the indexes of a candidate's reports and in
the reports themselves. In addition, some of the terminology
on the site could be clearer, particularly the titles of the web
site sections. Washington provides a subject index on the
state homepage, which is an excellent feature to help members
of the public locate the Public Disclosure Commission's site,
and contributes to good overall technical usability.
