Campaign Disclosure Project, a collaboration of the UCLA School of Law, the Center for Government Studies, and the California Voter Foundation, just released their fifth-annual nationwide study that grades and ranks each state on their level of campaign disclosure.  The study, found that, over the past five years, states have made great strides in increasing electronic filing of campaign disclosure reports, leading to new levels of openness and transparency at the state level. Kim Alexander, CVF’s president, said that electronic filing has a direct impact on how useful that data is online.  “State disclosure agencies are far more likely to present campaign finance data in ways that allow the public to search, sort, and download the information when disclosure reports are initially filed electronically in a digital format,” she said. We at Sunlight obviously agree, and it’s the argument we are making to the U.S. Senate.

The study ranks each state in four categories: campaign disclosure laws, electronic filing programs, public access to campaign finance data, and disclosure Web site usability. The report also gives advice on how the states can make improvements. States did better in the disclosure law and Web site usability categories, with 45 passing and five failing in each, according to their press release. Thirty passed in the electronic filing category while 20 failed. Thirty-six states passed in the data accessibility category and 14 failed.

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Sure the temperature is rising in D.C. but it’s like Christmas morning for public policy geeks when groups like the non-profit Center for Governmental Studies (CGS) launch something like PolicyArchive.org.

CGS says that the site is the “largest online repository of public policy research in the world.” And it’s all at your fingertips for free! Before the launch of this, online policy research could be quite burdensome, requiring the researcher to navigate through multiple Web sites that use various formats. CGS’ goal is to change all that by collecting policy papers from a “wide range of nonprofit, educational, governmental, private and international think tanks and research organizations” on 306 subtopics. The site currently has available 12,000 policy documents from over 220 think tanks, policy shops and other research organizations. A full listing of contributing sources can be found here.

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