The State of Disclosure in Florida

Florida is a leading performer in Grading State Disclosure 2007, with top five rankings in both the Electronic Filing and Disclosure Content Accessibility categories. Florida again earned a B+ overall, though its rank slipped two places to 4th due to slightly lower usability test ratings.

Florida’s campaign disclosure law requires candidates to report details about contributors giving more than $100, including occupation, but not employer data. Expenditure disclosure is strong, with candidates reporting subvendor information and accrued expenditures. The law’s enforcement provisions, including mandatory desk reviews and field audits, are another strong point. Florida has mandatory electronic filing for all statewide and legislative candidates and does not allow waivers for this requirement. The state earned an A+ in 2007 and shares the highest ranking in the country for the Electronic Filing category.

Florida again earned an A in the Disclosure Content Accessibility category and moved up to 4th in this area, from 5th in 2005. The state’s disclosure site offers searchable databases of contributions and expenditures that cover over ten years of filings, including both electronic filings and paper filings that have been data-entered. Candidate reports are made available immediately upon receipt. The public can search campaign donors by name and occupation, but a donor’s employer cannot be searched due to the lack of this disclosure requirement in the law. The site offers an index of candidate reports, which provides a clear summary of the data within each report. However, this feature may be obscured by its placement on the site, since reports are not accessed through the “Campaign Finance Information” link.

Florida received a lower grade in Online Contextual and Technical Usability in 2007, but remains in the top ten in this category. Testers found accessing the disclosure site from the state’s homepage to be challenging and more testers reported confusion with the disclosure site itself than in 2005. Even so, Florida maintains excellent options for comparing fundraising and spending totals among candidates, and also provides a thorough description of the available data and instructions for using the searchable databases. Though visitors to the site are not able to differentiate between original and amended candidate filings, the agency reports that they are working to resolve this issue. 

→ Quick Fix: Make it easier to access and view candidates’ full reports from the section of the site currently labeled “Campaign Finance Information”.

♦ Editor’s Pick: The “Candidate Listing” for the 2008 election cycle includes candidates’ names, political parties, office sought and incumbency status, and links to each candidate’s campaign finance activity. View image

Disclosure Agency: Department of State
Disclosure Web Site: http://www.dos.state.fl.us