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The State of Disclosure in Oklahoma
Oklahoma ranked 21st and earned a grade in
the B range for the first time in 2008. Oklahoma
made strong gains in the Online Contextual
and Technical Usability category, moving from
an F in 2007 to a C- in 2008.
Oklahoma
earned a C+ again in the Campaign Disclosure
Law category and ranked 27th in 2008. Oklahoma’s
law requires candidates to report detailed
information about contributors giving more
than $50, including occupation and employer
data. Large, last-minute contributions are
disclosed prior to Election Day, as are last-minute
independent expenditures. A major deficiency
in Oklahoma’s disclosure law
is that while campaign expenditures over $50
must be reported by amount, date, and purpose,
campaign vendors are not reported by name.
The state’s mandatory electronic filing
program, operated by the Oklahoma Ethics Commission,
earned the state an A again in 2008. Both statewide
and legislative candidates who reach a threshold
of $20,000 must file electronically and benefit
from the Commission’s very detailed campaign
reporting manual.
Oklahoma
earned a B+ and ranked 17th in the accessibility
rankings in 2008, up from a B- and 22nd place
in 2007. The improvement came as the result
of the Ethics Commission reporting in 2008
that paper-filed reports are made available
online more quickly and campaign finance data
is now available to the public on a disk. Oklahoma
offers online, searchable databases of campaign
contributions and expenditures that contain
both electronic reports and paper-filed reports
that have been data-entered by agency staff.
The contributions database can be searched
by a donor’s name, employer, or zip code,
and search results can be sorted online. As
noted in the 2007 assessment, the public can
search the expenditures database by vendor,
but results are not comprehensive as vendor
disclosure is not required in the law. Site
visitors can download large spreadsheet files
containing the contents of the database; but
adding the ability to download database search
results would also be helpful.
After
receiving an F in 2007, Oklahoma improved
to a C- in 2008 with a nice redesign of the
Ethics Commission’s web site and a stronger
usability test performance in 2008. Usability
testers rated the site easier to understand
than testers did in 2007, and all testers were
confident in the data they found on the site.
The new site is easier to navigate and offers
clearer terminology to guide site visitors.
The site could be further enhanced with a listing
of candidates for the current election cycle
(the site now features a list of candidates
that covers many years), and by providing comparisons
of totals raised and spent by the candidates
for each office to complement the broader lists
of the top overall campaigns that cover multiple
election cycles.
→ Quick
Fix: Allow site visitors to
download database search results.
Currently, only larger data files
can be downloaded for offline analysis.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: The “Statistical
Information” page offers top
ten lists of committees receiving the
most contributions, making the most
expenditures, and maintaining the largest
account balances. View
image
Disclosure Agency: Ethics Commission
Disclosure Web Site: http://www.ok.gov/oec |