Iowa has shown significant improvement
this year, raising its overall grade from
an F to a D, and its overall rank from
38th to 31st, with most of the gains coming
in the Online Contextual and Technical
Usability category.
Iowa’s
disclosure law can be described as average,
and requires candidates to report detailed
information about almost all contributions
received and expenditures made. Legislation
passed in 2004 now requires a supplemental
pre-election filing for candidates reaching
a certain fundraising threshold, which
accounts for the bump in Iowa’s
law grade from a C- to a C. Another
piece of disclosure-related legislation
unfortunately didn’t
fare as well: the House passed a bill this
year mandating electronic filing for statewide
and legislative candidates, but it stalled
in the Senate. Had it become law,
its phased-in requirements would not have
taken effect until 2007 (challengers) and
2009 (incumbents), but even that would
have been a step in the right direction.
Though
the state’s grade and rank
for Disclosure Content Accessibility has
not changed since 2004, there has been
one small measurable improvement in this
area, which is that the agency reduced
the price of paper copies of campaign finance
reports. Otherwise, there have been
few changes in data accessibility and the
main deficiency is still a lack of any
searchable—or even sortable—data,
even though approximately one-third of
the candidates are filing electronically.
No
other state improved more in the web
site usability category than Iowa,
which jumped from an F and rank of
44 in 2004, to a C+ and rank of 7 in
2005. The huge gain
can be attributed mostly to a much higher
score in the usability test. Testers
were able to answer specific questions
about candidate fundraising using the Ethics
and Campaign Disclosure Board web site,
and felt the site was easy to understand
and navigate. Additionally,
the agency made a number of specific improvements
to the site, including making both current
and historical summary campaign finance
information available online, adding a “How
to Use this Site” page, and featuring
a candidate list with more complete information.
→ Quick
Fix: Organize
campaign finance filings by candidate,
rather than by reporting period,
to give site visitors a better
sense of each committee’s
complete filing history.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: An
overview document including summary
amounts raised and spent by candidates
is available not only for candidates
in the most recent statewide election,
but also for those who have formed
exploratory committees for the next
election. View image
