After
improving significantly in 2004, there
has been little noticeable improvement
in Tennessee’s disclosure program
in 2005 and the state’s overall grade
actually dropped slightly from a D to a
D-, due to a weaker performance in the
usability test.
Tennessee’s
disclosure law, ranked 40th in the country,
requires candidates to report details
about contributors giving over $100 and
to quickly report large contributions
made in the weeks leading up to Election
Day. All expenditures over $100 must
be disclosed, but subvendor payments are
not detailed. There is no reporting
of independent expenditures. Improvements
to Tennessee’s law may be on the
way, however; a Citizen Advisory Group
on Ethics appointed by the governor in
July 2005 has already conducted its review
and presented its report, including recommendations
to increase the frequency of disclosure
reporting and require the disclosure of
donors’ occupations and employers.
The Registry of Election Finance has a
voluntary electronic filing system, in
which half of the state’s legislative
candidates participate.
Tennessee’s
D- and rank of 27 in the Disclosure Content
Accessibility category reflect a lingering
weakness in the area of access to paper
copies of disclosure reports, and a disclosure
web site that is still in the process
of being enhanced and fine tuned. The
Registry of Election Finance unveiled
a new system for viewing and searching
itemized campaign records online in 2004,
but the system is so far only capable
of searching for contributions, not expenditures,
and has a few minor technical difficulties
that still need to be ironed out. Registry
staff have said the agency plans to expand
the contributor search options and introduce
an expenditures search, however those
changes are not yet in place.
There
were few changes to Tennessee’s
disclosure web site in 2005, but its grade
for Online Contextual and Technical Usability
fell from a B to a C-, due to a significantly
lower score in the usability test that
makes up one-third of this category grade.
Testers had greater difficulty this year
locating individual contributors to the
governor, and had less confidence in
the accuracy of the information they
did find. Only half felt terminology
on the web site was easy to understand,
while the other half felt it was confusing.
In spite of the drop, Tennessee’s
disclosure web site is still its strong
point and features a number of excellent
resources that give the public context
in which to view campaign records; the
best might be the reports of Candidate
Summary Contributions and Expenditures
that are compiled by the Registry and
go back to 1996.
→ Quick
Fix: Add a mechanism
for searching itemized expenditures,
which can already be browsed online.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: Simple,
clean design of the state’s disclosure
web site. View image
