The State of Disclosure in Indiana

An improvement in the area of electronic filing was offset by a drop in Indiana’s web site usability grade, leaving the state with another overall C- and a slightly lower overall rank in the 2005 study.

Indiana’s campaign disclosure law is the weakest element of its disclosure program, and ranks in the bottom ten in the nation. Candidates must report detailed information about contributors giving at least $100, but employers are not disclosed and occupations are included only for major donors of $1,000 or more.  Expenditures over $100 are disclosed, but reports do not include subvendor information. There is no disclosure of independent expenditures, and Indiana is still the only state in the nation that does not require candidates to report in-kind (non-cash) contributions of goods and services. The state legislature passed a mandatory electronic filing law for statewide candidates in 2005, but unfortunately did not apply the requirement to themselves; electronic filing will remain voluntary for those seeking legislative office.

Indiana performs best in the Disclosure Content Accessibility category, and offers well-designed searchable databases of contributions and expenditures that include both electronically-filed and paper-filed disclosure records. The only field missing from the searchable database is contributor’s employer, but that cannot be added until the law changes to require that data to be disclosed in the first place. To improve further in this area, the Secretary of State’s office could speed up the process of data entering paper reports and posting them online, which currently takes one to two weeks.

Indiana’s score in the usability test dropped in 2005, causing a corresponding drop in the state’s Online Contextual and Technical Usability grade. Testers had some trouble locating summary information for specific candidates, and reported varying levels of satisfaction with the disclosure web site this year, with half of them finding the site somewhat or very confusing. Strong points in web site usability include thorough information about exactly which records are available online, and a well-designed report index format. The Secretary of State’s web site, which was redesigned in 2004, was updated again in 2005.

→ Quick Fix: Compile summary information that is already available online for individual candidates into a single document, to make it easier for site visitors to quickly compare fundraising and spending across candidates.

♦ Editor’s Pick: Itemized contribution and expenditure data that has been amended is marked with a yellow “A” in the display of search results. View image

Disclosure Agency: Secretary of State
Disclosure Web Site: http://www.state.in.us/sos