Alabama gets an ‘F’

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: September 19, 2008

(Sarcasm alert: Watch out. If you don’t speak sarcasm, skip this post.)

The Campaign Disclosure Project has released its annual report on—well, campaign finance disclosure.

Brace yourself for this simply shocking news: Alabama didn’t fare so well.

Actually, we got an F. Alabama was one of only 10 states to actually fail.

But we didn’t earn just any F! No sir-ree.

F-minus, the kind of spectacular failure only reserved for those lawmaking bodies whose members actually spend time figuring out ways to obscure campaign finance information!

But not just any F-minus. Oh, no. We’re talking second-from-the-bottom F-minus. As in, out of all the 50 states, there’s only one that does a worse job of campaign finance disclosure than we do.

SIDEBAR: Note to self: Write post later about new state slogan: “Alabama: At least we’re not Wyoming.“ END SIDEBAR

The Campaign Disclosure Project rated Alabama’s campaign finance law and e-filing capability and the accessibility and usability of that information. Reading Alabama’s ratings is like looking at my 6th grade home economics summary sheet: F. F. F. D-minus. F overall.

Alabama and Mississippi are alone in the South in lacking a searchable database for campaign finance reports.

SIDEBAR: Note to self: Edit previous slogan: “Alabama: At least we’re not Wyoming—or Mississippi.“ END SIDEBAR

This is simply inexcusable, considering the amount of time state officials have had to get it done—and the fact that pretty much everyone else has figured it out already. Who needs “We’re Number 1,“ when you can chant, “We’re one of eight! We’re one of eight!“—as in, states that don’t have e-filing?

Hey, Alabama legislators. There’s this really cool thing now called the Internet. It’s really awesome. You can get “online” and look at all sorts of information. You can even search for certain things with this groundbreaking innovation called “Google.“ And there are actually software programs that will allow your constituents to keep up with what you’re doing in terms of campaign finance.

Oh, wait. You legislators probably already knew all that, so that’s why we don’t have the database.

Readers, at the risk of offending certain state legislators who don’t appreciate hearing how legislators in our neighbor states serve their constituents, it’s hard to understand what you’re missing if you’ve never seen a searchable system in action. So I would like to provide you with this link to Florida’s online searchable database of campaign contributions and expeditures. Note that you can view the campaign finance activity of candidates as well as their committees. Note that you can have the results returned either directly to your screen or downloaded into a tab-delineated file, which you can use with Excel to sort the information.

Want to see how it works? Type in Ray Sansom in the candidate search field. Sansom is the incoming Speaker of the Florida House. He was elected in 2002, which means that in November, Sansom will begin his fourth and final 2-year term (Florida has term limits). But since Florida’s system offers online reports all the way back to the 1996 GENERAL ELECTION, you can view every contribution Sansom has ever collected during his political career—and you can search all the other contributions of each one of his contributors, too!

Pick an election year, hit submit at the bottom of the form (or just press enter) ... and ...

Voilà! Instant accountability!

Incidentally, Florida’s electronic filing program earned an A+ and the top spot in the country; it ranks seventh among the states with an A for disclosure content accessibility.

Not to insinuate that Alabama’s legislators would want us to get As or anything. I just wanted to point out Florida’s marks for the sake of comparison.

There’s just one more thing. Consider Alabama’s five-year trend from the Campaign Disclosure Project from 2003 to now (no ratings were done in 2006):

Law:  F, F, F, F, F
E-Filing:  F, F, F, F, F
Access:  F, F, F, F, F
Usability:  F, C-minus, D, F, D-minus

Dadgum usability! Ruined our perfect score!

Seriously, legislators, this is outrageous, and your failure in this area is embarrassing—if not to yourselves, at least to us. Fortunately for you (and unfortunately for us), we’ve grown quite used to you failing and embarrassing us.

Fellow Alabamians, this is just another example of our Legislature’s failure to provide in even the most basic way for the citizens of this state.

When will we have had enough?