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The State of Disclosure in Oklahoma
Oklahoma’s
campaign disclosure program ranked 19th in
the country for the second year in a row,
though its overall grade improved from a
C- to a C in 2005, mostly due to improvements
in the area of web site usability. The state’s
campaign disclosure law is its biggest
strength.
Oklahoma
law requires that candidates report detailed
information about contributors giving
more than $50, including occupation and
employer. Large, last-minute
contributions are disclosed prior to Election
Day, as are last-minute independent expenditures.
Candidates must report all expenditures,
including subvendor information, but not
accrued expenses. A new administrative
rule will make electronic filing mandatory
for all statewide and legislative candidates
raising or spending over $20,000 per campaign,
but does not take effect until July 2006.
The
state again received a B for Disclosure
Content Accessibility, and while its rank
in this category is high, there is still
room for improvement. The searchable
databases of contributions and expenditures
on Oklahoma’s disclosure web site
are well-designed and include a number
of search options, but still only contain
records for 25 percent of the candidates
who file with the disclosure agency. For
the 75 percent who file reports on paper
rather than electronically, only summary
data is available online; members of the
public wishing to view itemized contributions
to the governor’s campaign committee,
for example, must request paper copies
of those records from the Ethics Commission
in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma’s grade for web site usability
rose from an F to a D, because the Commission’s
web site now has more complete information
about campaign finance restrictions, and
because the state’s score in the
usability test improved in 2005. While
most testers felt the site’s terminology
was easy to understand, only half felt
confident they could accurately answer
questions about the governor’s fundraising
using data from the site.
→ Quick
Fix: Add the ability
to search the database by expenditure
purpose. This
information already shows up in the
search results, so it should be relatively
simple to add one more field to the
search interface.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: Index
of reports for each committee is
nicely designed and includes a column
showing whether a report was filed
on paper or electronically.
View image
 Disclosure Agency: Ethics Commission
Disclosure Web Site: http://www.ethics.state.ok.us
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