Iowa's
rank and grade show a disclosure program that has significant
room for improvement, particularly in its law and the usability
of its web site.
Iowa
law requires candidates to file one statement in non-election
years and two statements before an election. For contributions
of $25 or more, candidates must disclose a contributor's name
and address, but occupation and employer are not required. Last-minute
contributions do not have to be reported prior to an election. Expenditures
of five dollars or more must be disclosed, but subvendor information
does not have to be reported. Independent expenditures
are not required to be reported. Electronic filing is
voluntary for statewide and legislative candidates.
The
campaign finance data featured on Iowa's disclosure web site
is all in PDF format and includes a mixture of statements generated
from electronically filed data and paper statements that have
been scanned and posted to the site. There are
no searchable databases of contributions or expenditures. Unfortunately,
the usefulness of electronically filed reports is limited by
posting them in PDF format because the data cannot be sorted. Some
other states that do not have campaign finance databases
do post electronically filed reports in a more useful format,
such as Excel or HTML, thus allowing users to sort and
even download the data.
The
usability of the web site also has significant room for
improvement. While there is a good explanation of the
campaign finance restrictions in the state, the site lacks
other useful contextual information. There are no lists of
the total amounts raised and spent by state candidates and
there is no explanation of which filers' reports appear on
the site and which do not. It would also be helpful if the
site used clearer terminology. For example, the text of Iowa's
campaign finance disclosure law appears on the web site, but
the link to get to it has the title “Chapter 56”. Iowa's
site performed poorly in the usability test because the testers
found the site difficult to use.
