Campaign finance confusion

ryanteaguebeckwith — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:23:57 -0500

The State Board of Elections does a good job posting the reports from political action committees and candidates on its Web site. But its design is a headache.

You can search for reports here, but you have to know the campaign's name. Type in "Robert Orr" or "Bob Orr" and you get nothing, since his campaign is listed as "Orr 2008." Want to look up the CAPA-PAC? You'd better know that stands for Carolina Asphalt Pavement Association, or you won't find it.

One nice thing: The SBOE allows you to download the reports as a database (CSV) or an image (PDF). That's the best of both worlds: Usability for searching the files, but transparency for those who want to double-check what the candidate turned in.

(Topic for discussion: Should candidates still be allowed to turn in handwritten reports?)

Another problem: The data doesn't always add up.

Consider Republican gubernatorial candidate Fred Smith's report: The summary sheet lists $661,807 in contributions from individuals and $29,115 from PACs. But it then gives the total as $662,099.

That's an obvious typo—someone added $291.15 instead of $29,115. But why should it be done manually at all? If row 8 is always the total of rows 5, 6 and 7, why not add them automatically?

The site allows you to link to pages of campaign contributions, though not to individual entries. But as pointed out here, it does not give you a trackback to verify what you're looking at or see other data from the same report.

That leads to our next principle: Give users breadcrumbs. Always include links to related pages or the Web site's home page to allow users who follow a link to see where they are.

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Campaign finance confusion