While
it received a passing grade, Maine's campaign finance disclosure
program shows significant room for improvement, particularly
in the areas of Electronic Filing and web site usability.
Maine
law requires candidates to file two statements in non-election
years and one statement six days before an election,
except for gubernatorial candidates, who are required to
file two pre-election statements. Detailed information, including
a contributor’s occupation, is required to be reported
for contributions greater than $50. Last-minute contributions
must be reported before an election. Details about all expenditures,
including subvendor information, must be disclosed. Expenditure
disclosures do not include a vendor's name, however. Independent
expenditures and last-minute independent expenditures must also
be reported prior to an election. Although its electronic filing
program receives adequate funding, provides some technical assistance
to candidates and offers web based filing and a standard filing
format, the fact that electronic filing is voluntary for statewide
and legislative candidates brings down Maine’s grade in
this area.
Maine
does an average job of making campaign finance data accessible
to the public, and all campaign finance filings are available
on the state's web site. Electronically filed reports
are available immediately and information from paper records
is data entered by agency staff within a month of being
filed. All campaign finance reports can be searched in
databases of contributions and expenditures. Maine does
offer a unique feature on its web site – in addition to contributor
and expenditure searches, it is possible to search for
a particular name or word across all types of filings, including
candidate, PAC, lobbyist and party committees.
The
usability of Maine's web site could be much better.
The terminology on the site could be improved; for example
the link to the campaign finance database is called “Maine
Campaign Finance Electronic Filing Link”, which is not
a clear description of what can be found there. In addition,
there are no lists of total amounts raised and spent
by candidates to give the public an overview of campaign
financing in the state, no information to help the public determine
which candidates' reports appear on the site and no list
of candidates for current or upcoming elections. Also, there
are no instructions for how to use the site and it may be hard
to use with a dial-up modem or a computer with limited RAM.
Usability
scores for Maine's site also show that there is substantial
room for improvement. Usability
testers found the campaign finance web site and easily
found individual contributor information, but they did not
locate summary campaign information.
