Nevada
again earned an F in 2007, the state’s
third straight failing grade in this
assessment. As in 2005, Nevada earned
its only passing grade in the web site
usability category.
Nevada’s disclosure law ranks in
the bottom five nationally, and is weak
in several areas. While the law requires
candidates to report contributors giving
more than $100, occupation, employer and
cumulative amount donated are not disclosed.
Expenditure disclosure is stronger, with
detailed information required for expenses
over $100, but reports do not include subvendor
payments. Disclosure of loan and independent
expenditure details remain weak points
in the law, and enforcement provisions
are minimal. Nevada maintains a voluntary
electronic filing program for candidates
and the Secretary of State’s office
reports that 20 percent of candidates are
using the system, a significant increase
since the 2005 assessment, when only one
percent of candidates reportedly used this
option.
Nevada’s grade for Disclosure Content
Accessibility continues to suffer from
a lack of searchable databases of contributions
and expenditures. The site does provide
scanned images of paper-filed disclosure
reports, though some are handwritten and
more difficult to browse than the cleanly-presented
HTML displays of electronically-filed reports.
None of the data can be sorted or downloaded,
making it difficult to locate a specific
contributor or campaign expense. A recent
improvement to the site is that the public
is now able to review the complete history
of a candidate’s filings on a single
page.
Nevada’s web site usability grade
slipped back into the D range in 2007 as
the result of a lower usability test performance
than in 2005. (The Secretary of State’s
web site was redesigned in 2007, but not
until after the testing process.) Testers
noted confusion over the site’s terminology
and rated their overall experience on the
site as below average. The site offers
a good amount of contextual information
to the public, including disclosure requirements
and an improved description of the data
available online. The site could made more
user-friendly by enhancing the listing
of filers to include the office/district
sought by each candidate; currently, all
filers are simply organized by name.
→ Quick
Fix: Provide a simple comparison
of the totals raised and spent
by candidates for each office in
the most recent election.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: The
state’s election laws are
easy to locate on the site and nicely
indexed. View image
