As
the sixth-ranked state, Hawaii currently has one of the best
campaign finance disclosure programs in the nation. Nonetheless,
its grades in Electronic Filing and Online Contextual and Technical
Usability show that it has room for improvement.
Hawaii
has a fairly strong campaign disclosure law. Candidates
must file semi-annual statements in non-election years
and three statements before an election. Candidates are required
to disclose details about contributions of $100 or more,
but a contributor's occupation and employer are only required
for contributions of $1,000 or more. Last-minute contributions
of $500 or more must be reported up to three days before
the election. Candidates must itemize all expenditures, including
subvendor information. Independent expenditures must be
reported and last-minute independent expenditures must
be reported within the last 10 days before an election. Hawaii
has a mandatory electronic filing program for statewide candidates
who reach a threshold of $5,000, but electronic filing
is voluntary for legislative candidates.
Hawaii
does a good job of posting campaign finance information on
the disclosure agency's site in a timely manner. Electronically
filed campaign finance reports are available on the site as soon
as they are filed and paper records are scanned onto the site
within a week of being received. The site does provide
databases of contributions and expenditures that contain data
from electronically filed reports and are searchable on a number
of fields. Searching can be confusing, however, because
there are two databases on the site, HERTS1 and HERTS2, with
no explanation about what can be found in each. NIC Technologies
is the contractor for the HERTS databases, which contain many
of the same usability problems as other NIC state disclosure
databases, such as the case sensitivity of search fields that
is not explained to site visitors. In addition, since
electronic filing is voluntary for legislative candidates, there
is not a lot of information available in the database for those
candidates.
Hawaii's
poorest performance was in web site usability, especially contextual
usability. Although the total amounts raised
and spent by the two major party gubernatorial candidates is
posted on the site, this type of summary information could be
expanded to include all statewide and legislative races. The
site also does not explain what records are and are not available
online and there are no complete instructions about how to use
the databases. Hawaii's usability testing scores reflect
the poor usability of the web site and show substantial
room for improvement.
