Major
improvements in the area of Disclosure
Content Accessibility brought Missouri’s
overall grade up to a C- from last year’s
D. There were no changes in the law and
electronic filing categories, and the state’s
biggest weakness is still web site usability.
Missouri
law requires candidates to file quarterly
reports in non-election years and one
report before each election. Detailed
contributor information, including occupation
and employer, must be disclosed for all
contributions greater than $100. Last-minute
contributions must be reported prior to
the election. Details about expenditures
greater than $100 must also be disclosed,
but subvendor information is not reported. Independent
expenditures are reported, but last-minute
independent expenditures are not disclosed
prior to the election. Electronic
filing is mandatory for statewide candidates
who reach a $15,000 threshold, and voluntary
for legislative candidates. The General
Assembly considered a bill (HB 1150) to
make e-filing mandatory for legislative
candidates, but the legislation did not
become law.
With
the addition of searchable databases
of contributions and expenditures to
the Missouri Ethics Commission web site,
the state made major advancements in
the accessibility of campaign finance
records. Contributions
can now be searched by contributor name,
employer, and contribution amount; expenditures
can be searched by vendor name and expense
amount. Adding date and zip code
fields to the contributor search, and date
and expenditure purpose fields to the expenditure
search, would further improve the new system. Access
to paper-filed reports on the Internet
is still somewhat impeded by the proprietary
software which must be used in order to
view those reports and which doesn’t
work well for all site visitors. Access
to paper copies of campaign filings from
the Ethics Commission is very good.
Online
Contextual and Technical Usability is
still the category in which Missouri
performs the worst, having again received
an F. The disclosure web site features
some historical comparisons of candidates’ campaign
finance activity, but is lacking the same
information for current elections. Instructions
are limited, and the candidate list does
not include a candidate’s party affiliation. It
is still very difficult to locate the Ethics
Commission web site from the main state
homepage, which contributes to the very
low score Missouri again received in the
usability testing.
