Although
it received a passing grade and ranked in the top half of the
states, Idaho has significant room to improve its campaign
finance disclosure program. Idaho's
biggest weaknesses are in the areas of Electronic Filing
and Disclosure Content Accessibility.
Idaho
has an average campaign disclosure law. Candidates
are required to file one statement in non-election years, one
statement before each primary and two statements before each
general election. Candidates must disclose contributors'
names and addresses for contributions greater than $50, but information
about contributors' occupations and employers is not required. Last-minute
contributions must be reported within 48 hours. Expenditures
of $25 or more must be reported and subvendor information is
required. Independent expenditures and last-minute independent
expenditures must be disclosed prior to an election. Idaho
has no electronic filing program for statewide or legislative
candidates.
Considering
the limited staff and financial resources of the disclosure
agency, the fact that Idaho has a comprehensive database
of contributions is impressive. The Secretary of State's
staff data enters the contributions to create the database,
which allows site visitors to search by contributor name
and contribution amount, but not by the date the contribution
was made or the contributor's zip code or employer. There
is a lack of uniformity in the data; for example, a search
for Boise Cascade Corporation returns four different results
depending on whether the name is listed in itemized records
as “Corporation,” “Corp.” with
a period, “Corp,” with a comma, or “Corp” with no punctuation.
There is no searchable database of expenditures. For those
seeking access to paper copies of original campaign finance
reports, the agency suggests printing the information from the
web site and discourages requests for hard copies of original
reports. Paper records cost 25 cents per page.
The
usability of Idaho's web site is fair, but some improvements
could be made in this area as well. The filing periods
could be provided in an index of campaign finance reports and
the agency web site could be easier to find from the state's
homepage. One significant problem on the site is that
a visitor who clicks on the “campaign finance reports” link from
the main Secretary of State page, will go straight to the disclosure
reports and may miss important contextual information that is
only available on the Election Department page. Directing
database users through the Election Department page would fix
the problem. The usability scores for Idaho's site also
indicate that there is room for improvement.
