Iowa needs modern campaign disclosure

Iowa needs modern campaign disclosure

The QC Times looks at Iowa's campaign finance web site and finds it sorely lacking. I've grappled with it for ages myself, at home and at work, and it's ad bad as it can possibly by while still being able to say "campaign finance data is available on line."

Often you have to know the exact form and function of the specific report you are looking for. And the vast majority of reports are scanned images in .pdf format that take forever to download and, once loaded, are illegible often as not. It combines the worst of paper with the worst of the web; you more or less have to print the things out to make any use of them. No one has time for that except newspaper interns.

Iowa needs, number one, mandatory on-line reporting. No more chicken scratching. We also need a searchable database. And there should be some way to link variations on a name so that donors can't fly under the radar as John Smith, John Q. Smith, J.Q. Smith and J. Quimby Smith.

Isn't there a way we can use some of the HAVA money for this? The answer is no, but campaign finance is as underrated an issue as parts of HAVA are overrated (there's no massive waves of mail-in voter fraud by dogs).

Thanks for the hat tips: State 29, Diary of a political madman, and Political Forecast.