The
only measurable change in South Dakota’s
campaign disclosure program was a negative
one, and the state again ranked second-to-last
in the nation. South Dakota’s extremely
poor disclosure law and lack of electronic
filing make it nearly impossible for the
state to achieve above an F in the study.
Contributor
disclosure is particularly weak and candidates
are not required to report the date contributions
were received, contributors’ occupations,
or cumulative amounts donated. Expenditure
disclosure is also lacking, and does
not include vendor name or expenditure
date. Other shortcomings
include a lack of reporting of independent
expenditures, and weak enforcement provisions.
On the positive side, last-minute contributions
of $500 or more are disclosed prior to
Election Day, giving the public a way to
monitor campaign finance activity that
occurs in the final weeks of a campaign.
As noted above, South Dakota does not have
an electronic filing program.
As
was the case in 2004, staff at the Secretary
of State’s office scan
all statewide and legislative candidates’ disclosure
reports and post them on the agency’s
web site, usually the same day they are
received by that office. Reports
can be browsed in PDF, but itemized data
cannot be sorted, searched or downloaded,
which is the main reason South Dakota received
an F for Disclosure Content Accessibility.
The Secretary of State charges $1.00 per
page to purchase paper copies of disclosure
reports, which is higher than every other
state except for Alabama (which also charges
$1.00).
South
Dakota not only received a passing grade
in the Online Contextual and Technical
Usability category, but it also ranked
in the top ten in the nation in this area.
The state’s disclosure web site
includes a number of helpful contextual
resources, including summary reports
of campaign finance activity, complete
candidate lists, and information about
campaign finance rules and disclosure
requirements. It became harder to locate
the web site from the state of South
Dakota’s main web
portal, but the state still did well in
the usability test.
→ Quick
Fix: Reduce the
charge for copies of campaign disclosure
reports.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: Prominent
link to the list of candidates from
the report viewing page. View image
