With
low scores in almost every category, Delaware has significant
room to improve its campaign finance disclosure program. The
state received passing grades only for its law and Disclosure
Content Accessibility.
Delaware
law requires candidates to file campaign finance reports
annually in non-election years and two times before an election. Candidates
must report detailed information about contributors who give
$100 or more, but are not required to list a contributor's occupation
or employer. Last-minute contributions do not have to
be reported before an election. Details about expenditures
of $100 or more must be reported, but subvendor information is
not required. Independent expenditures must be reported,
but last-minute independent expenditures are not disclosed until
after the election. Electronic filing is voluntary for
both statewide and legislative candidates.
Delaware
does an average job of making campaign finance data accessible
to the public. A combination of electronically
filed and scanned-in paper campaign finance records are made
available on the state disclosure agency's web site as soon as
they are filed. Searchable databases of contributions
and expenditures are featured on the site, but they only contain
information from electronically filed records. The state
does not offer campaign finance records to the public in
any digital format other than the Internet and it is not
possible to download data for analyzing offline.
The
state's disclosure web site did well in the usability testing,
but poor contextual information brought down Delaware's overall
usability score. There is no information about the state's
disclosure law and requirements online, and there are no lists
of the total amounts raised and spent by state candidates. The
site does include a complete list of candidates, but is
lacking other information to help the public determine
whose campaign finance reports are available on the Internet,
such as a general explanation of the contents of the campaign
finance database.
