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The State of Disclosure in South Dakota
South
Dakota’s grades and rankings
remained relatively unchanged in most categories,
though a weaker performance in the usability
testing brought the state down to a D+
in the Online Technical and Contextual
Usability category in 2007.
Although
not reflected in this year’s
scoring, South Dakota enacted significant
campaign disclosure reforms in 2007 upon
the recommendation of the Secretary of
State. While 2007 scoring reflects the
state’s lack of detailed expenditure
and independent expenditure reporting as
of December 31, 2006, provisions of the
new law include: increased reporting requirements,
both in non-election years and pre-election
periods; financial penalties for late reports;
and the disclosure of independent expenditures.
Independent expenditure reporting became
a major issue following the 2006 statewide
elections, when the identity of a donor
that contributed $750,000 to a ballot measure
campaign was not disclosed. The new reporting
requirements took effect on July 1, 2007
and will greatly improve campaign disclosure
in South Dakota.
South
Dakota received an F again in 2007 in
the Electronic Filing category and is
one of just ten states that do not offer
such a program. The Secretary of State’s
office scans and posts all statewide and
legislative candidates’ disclosure
reports online within 24 hours of receipt.
Reports can be browsed in PDF, but itemized
data cannot be sorted, searched or downloaded,
which is the main reason South Dakota received
an F for Disclosure Content Accessibility
again in 2007. While data on disk is not
available, paper copies are available to
the public through the Secretary of State’s
office, but at $1.00 per page, the cost
can be prohibitive.
South
Dakota’s grade slipped from
a C to a D+ in the Online Contextual and
Technical Usability category due to a weaker
usability test performance. Testers had
a more difficult time answering the test
questions than in 2005, and gave the site
a below average rating overall. The Secretary
of State’s office does provide a
number of helpful contextual resources
for the public, including summaries of
campaign finance activity, information
about disclosure requirements, detailed
candidate lists and copies of both original
and amended disclosure reports.
→ Quick
Fix: To improve site navigation,
change the color of links that have
been visited by the user. This
feature would be particularly beneficial
when reviewing the index of candidate
reports.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: The index
of a candidate’s reports
clearly labels amended reports,
and users can sort the index by
clicking on the column headings. View image
 Disclosure Agency: Secretary of State
Disclosure Web Site: http://www.sdsos.gov
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