Nevada
saw few measurable changes to its campaign
disclosure program in 2005 and received
an overall F for the second year in a
row. Web site usability is still Nevada’s
strength; its biggest weakness is its disclosure
law.
Nevada
law requires candidates to report details
about contributors giving more than $100,
but occupation, employer and cumulative
amount donated are not disclosed. Detailed
information about expenditures over $100
must be filed, but reports do not include
subvendor payments. Disclosure of loan
and independent expenditure details is
minimal, and enforcement provisions are
weak compared to other states. The
Secretary of State’s office reports
that it has pushed for mandatory electronic
filing in the last two legislative sessions,
but the legislation did not make it out
of committee in 2005. The state’s
program remains voluntary, and is used
by only one percent of statewide and legislative
candidates.
Nevada’s
grade for Disclosure Content Accessibility
suffers from a lack of searchable data
online, or even records that can be sorted
or downloaded. What the state’s
disclosure web site does offer is scanned
images of reports that have been filed
on paper, many of which have been handwritten.
These are accessed through indexes of
reports organized by year, rather than
by committee, which means that viewing
all of one particular candidate’s
filings requires site visitors to search
through eight separate directories covering
the years 1998-2005. To improve access
to reports and make it easier for the
public to get a sense of each candidate’s
filing history, the Secretary of State
could add a second interface for viewing
reports that is organized by candidate
first, and then by date. On a positive
note, the agency reduced the price for
paper copies of reports from $1.00 to 50
cents per page, which is more reasonable,
but still high compared to rates in other
states.
Web
site usability is clearly Nevada’s
strong point and its performance in this
area improved in 2005. The state’s
Online Contextual and Technical Usability
grade rose from a D back up to a C, mostly
as a result of a higher score in the usability
test. Testers felt confident in their
ability to accurately answer questions
about candidate fundraising using data
from the site, and generally felt the terminology
was easy to understand.
→ Quick
Fix: Add office
and district information to the lists
of candidate-incumbent campaign finance
reports, to help people locate their
representatives and candidates.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: The
state’s election laws are
easy to locate on the site and nicely
indexed. View image
