The State of Disclosure in Mississippi

There were no measurable changes to Mississippi’s campaign disclosure program in 2005, which is reflected in its overall F, a grade it has received all three years of this study. Mississippi performs best in the area of Campaign Disclosure Law, and is weakest in Electronic Filing and Disclosure Content Accessibility.

The state’s disclosure law requires candidates to report details about contributors giving in excess of $200, including their occupations and employers. Last-minute contributions (but not last-minute independent expenditures) have to be reported before Election Day. Expenditure disclosure is weak and requires candidates to report vendor name and expenditure date, but not subvendor details, accrued expenses, or expenditure descriptions. Mississippi failed to enact mandatory electronic filing legislation for the second consecutive year in 2005, after the House and Senate could not agree on various campaign finance reform and disclosure provisions of the bill. Among the disputed points was the threshold amount for triggering mandatory e-filing, which began at $75,000 and which some suggested should be set as high as $500,000.

Access to campaign finance filings remains problematic in Mississippi, and the state again received an F for Disclosure Content Accessibility. The Secretary of State’s web site features reports filed by all statewide and legislative candidates in the last ten years, but those filings are scanned and their usefulness is limited. One unique offering is that each disclosure report lists the candidate’s web site and email address on the report’s summary page; few, if any, other states combine web and email contact information with disclosure filings in this way.

Mississippi’s highest ranking comes in the Online Contextual and Technical Usability category, in which it received a D+ but is ranked relatively high at 21st. The State of Mississippi makes it easy to locate the campaign finance disclosure web site, with an agency directory by topic that specifically lists “campaign finance.” Once at the site, visitors will find a summary of whose records are online, complete candidate lists, and information about disclosure requirements. Still missing, though, is a simple list of candidates and the amounts raised and spent by each—a critical resource for helping the public put campaign finance activity into a larger context.

→ Quick Fix:  Add complete reporting periods to each candidate’s report index.

♦ Editor’s Pick:  The listings of 48-hour reports for each candidate include the contributor name in the report index, which means that basic information about all last-minute contributions received by the candidate is available on one page. View image

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