Relative
to most other states, Arizona has a good campaign finance disclosure
program, with mandatory electronic filing and a fair amount
of campaign finance data available on its web site. However,
the contextual and technical usability of its web site
could be better.
Arizona
law requires candidates to file one campaign finance report
in non-election years and two reports before an election. Candidates
must report detailed information, including occupation and employer,
about contributors who give $25 or more. Last-minute contributions
do not have to be reported until after an election. Candidates
are required to disclose all expenditures, no matter how small,
but subvendor information does not have to be reported. Also,
last-minute independent expenditures do not have to be reported
prior to elections. Arizona has one of the strongest electronic
filing programs in the country. It was enacted through
a 1998 initiative and mandates electronic filing by all
statewide and legislative candidates.
The
state makes all campaign finance reports available on its web
site as soon as they are filed. However, it could
be easier for the public to research campaign contributions and
expenditures. There is a searchable database of contributions,
but it is only possible to search by the name of the contributor
and the date of the contribution. It is not possible to
search by the amount of the contribution or the contributor's
employer. Although candidates have to disclose a contributor's
full address, the state does not publish any information about
a contributor's address on the Internet, so it is not possible
to search by the zip code where a contributor resides. The
data cannot be sorted online or downloaded for sorting
and analyzing offline, and the web site does not have a
searchable database of expenditures.
Arizona
could improve the usability of its site, especially its contextual
information. Currently, the site does not
feature lists of the total amounts raised and spent by state
candidates, or an explanation of which filers appear on the site,
and does not retain original campaign finance disclosure filings
online when amendments have been filed. The terminology
on the site could also be clearer. The usability testing
score reflects the weaknesses of the site, as it was difficult
for testers to locate information for which they were searching.
