Although
it ranked 15th in the nation for campaign finance disclosure,
Wisconsin's grade of C- shows that it has significant
room for improvement. It has a strong Electronic Filing
program, but its failing grade in Disclosure Content Accessibility
brought down Wisconsin's overall grade and rank.
Wisconsin
law requires candidates to file semi-annual reports in
non-election years and one report before each election. Candidates
must disclose information about contributors who give more than
$20, with occupation and employer information required for contributions
greater than $100. Expenditures of more than $20 must
be reported, but subvendor information is not required. Last-minute
contributions of $500 or more must be disclosed within 24 hours. Independent
expenditures and last-minute independent expenditures must be
disclosed prior to an election. Wisconsin has mandatory
electronic filing for statewide and legislative candidates
who reach a threshold of $20,000.
Wisconsin
has significant room to improve its efforts to make campaign
finance information accessible to the public. Campaign
finance reports are posted on the web site within one day of
being received, but itemized reports are only available for electronic
filers and they can only be browsed or sorted, not searched. Late
contribution reports are scanned and posted onto the site. Wisconsin
is one of six states with mandatory electronic filing that does
not offer searchable databases of campaign finance data online. The
lack of databases limits the usefulness of the campaign
finance information that is on the site.
The
usability of the site is average and could be improved.
The site features a report that provides the public with
an overview of campaign financing in the state, an explanation
of the disclosure law, a comprehensive list of candidates
for recent or current elections and information about which
reports are on the site. The
site uses clear terminology for explanations. The inclusion
of disclosure reporting periods in indexes and in the body
of campaign finance reports, and the posting of both original filings
and amendments would make the site better. It is somewhat
hard to locate the disclosure agency from the state's web portal,
and once site visitors reach the Board of Elections homepage, they
have to browse a very long list of election-related links and may
have difficulty locating campaign finance information. Wisconsin's
usability scores also indicate that there is room for improvement. Only
two out of six usability testers were able to locate the
governor's contribution totals. The usability testers were
not able to find any individual contributions.
