The State of Disclosure in Hawaii
Hawaii maintains excellent access to campaign
data and retained its top five rating in
2007. The state earned a B+, up from a
B in 2005, with improvements made in the
Disclosure Content Accessibility category.
Hawaii’s disclosure law requires
candidates to report detailed information
about contributors giving at least $100,
but occupation and employer information
is not reported until a donor gives $1,000.
The law’s strengths are in the disclosure
of expenditures, loan details and independent
expenditures, with last-minute independent
expenditures required to be reported prior
to Election Day. Legislative and statewide
candidates alike are now required to file
electronically under a new law enacted
in 2005. House Bill 1130, signed into law
in 2007, eliminated the $5,000 electronic
filing threshold and waiver option. To
further improve the electronic filing program,
the Campaign Spending Commission introduced
a new, web-based “Candidate Filing
System” in 2007.
Hawaii
moved up to 2nd place in the Disclosure
Content Accessibility category, earning
an A+ in 2007 as public access to records
improved. The Commission is in the process
of developing a new campaign finance
database comprised of data filed through
the “Candidate
Filing System”. In the meantime users
can access, sort and download data from
reports that have been filed through this
new system. Users can also access scanned
paper filings and searchable databases
of contributions and expenditures through
the older HERTS databases, which feature
multiple search fields.
Hawaii’s weakness continues to be in
the Online Contextual and Technical Usability
category, where the state’s grade dropped
slightly (from a D+ to a D) in 2007. Usability
testers gave the site a below average assessment,
and overviews of the totals raised and spent
in the 2006 elections were not available
online until after the close of the assessment
period in 2007. One challenge of Hawaii’s
site is that data is found in three different
locations online, depending on when it
was filed. Users who wish to compare spending
across elections must look in several places.
The agency has succeeded in making the
new site more user-friendly than the HERTS
databases, offering data in an attractive
and easily accessible format. The new site
could be enhanced with a clear set of user
instructions.
→ Quick
Fix: To make the site more
user-friendly, add a link from
the “Candidate
Filing System” site back
to the Campaign Spending Commission’s
homepage.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: Clean, attractive
design of the “Candidate Filing
System” site. View image
 Disclosure Agency: Campaign Spending Commission
Disclosure Web Site: http://www.state.hi.us/campaign
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