Although
Maine’s
overall D+ shows the state has significant
weaknesses in campaign finance disclosure,
improvements have been made, particularly
in the area of web site usability, and
more are on the way.
Maine
law requires most candidates to file
two statements in non-election years
and one statement six days before an
election; gubernatorial candidates must
file an additional pre-election statement. Candidates
must report detailed information for contributions
greater than $50, including the contributor’s
occupation, but not employer. Last-minute
contributions have to be reported before
an election. Details about all expenditures,
including subvendor information, must be
disclosed. Independent expenditures
and last-minute independent expenditures
must also be reported prior to an election. Maine
has a voluntary electronic filing program
for statewide and legislative candidates,
and the agency reported success in increasing
the number of e-filers over the past year.
Maine’s strengths in Data Content
Accessibility lie in the comprehensiveness
of its disclosure web site and the structure
of its campaign finance databases, which
allow searches on a number of fields and
offer downloadable files. Electronically
filed reports are added to the online database
immediately, but information from reports
filed on paper takes up to one month to
become available online. Fortunately,
access to copies of paper-filed records
is excellent in Maine, although at $.20
per page the cost is higher than what many
other states charge. Maine’s
grade in this category rose from a C in
2003, to a B- in 2004. The state
could improve further by shortening the
amount of time it takes to post campaign
finance data on the Internet, and providing
a mechanism for sorting information online.
More
telling than Maine’s repeat
F in Online Contextual and Technical Usability
is its rank in this category, which climbed
from 41 to 30 after the Commission on Governmental
Ethics and Election Practices made a number
of improvements to its web site. For
example, the terminology used throughout
the site has become clearer, and there
is now a comprehensive candidate list available
online. It is also now easier to
locate the agency’s web site from
the main state homepage. Two of the
more important items that are still missing
include an overview of candidate campaign
finance activity and a data history explanation. Further
improvements are coming, however. The
Commission recently redesigned its web
site, and although that change did not
occur within the research window for this
study, it should improve the state’s
performance in this category in 2005.
