Mandatory disclosure for ballot-initiative campaigns.

AuthorCarpenter, Dick M., II

One of the most controversial election-related issues in recent decades unquestionably has been campaign finance. On the heels of the Watergate scandal, campaign-finance laws at both the state and the federal levels drew much attention (Huckshorn 1985). In 1974 alone, twenty-four states adopted finance-reform laws, and by 1984 every state had some form of campaign-finance legislation. Although the typical provisions involved monetary limitations of various types and sizes (Gais and Malbin 1997), broader reform efforts included public financing and, the subject of this research, financial disclosure (Edwards 1995).

These reforms are often discussed in candidate elections, but campaigns related to state ballot initiatives also operate under finance laws, including disclosure. In fact, disclosure laws for ballot initiatives first appeared in the opening decades of the twentieth century (Key 1936). They became more popular as the number of citizen initiatives and the amount of money spent in those campaigns increased dramatically over time (Magleby 1994; Citrin 1996). Although spending on initiatives remained fairly stable into the 1980s (Owens 1986), the past two decades have witnessed an increase in spending on ballot initiatives that sometimes surpasses amounts dedicated to candidate elections (Reich 1989; Magleby and Patterson 1998). In the face of such spending, reformers have called for changes to existing campaign-finance laws to be applied also to ballot initiatives or for the creation of new laws.

One of the central features of such laws is public disclosure. In fact, in the world of campaign-finance regulation, disclosure represents the cornerstone of all state reform efforts (Davis-Denny 2005). In the name of transparency and access to information, these provisions require initiative committees to collect and report personal information about contributors, including names, addresses, contribution amounts, and even employers (Gais and Malbin 1997). Issue committees also must often report all expenditures, from the routine, such as political consultants and advertising, to the minutia, such as yard signs and supplies for lemonade stands (Huckshorn 1985). These reports are then made available to the public, often on state Web sites.

The justifications offered for such laws are simple. First, because money allegedly corrupts politics, all contributions and expenditures should be made public to keep the process "clean" (Seidman and Gilmore 1986; Meier and Holbrook 1992; Edwards 1995; McBride 1995; Hoesly 2005). Such support for disclosure began early in the twentieth century. For example, the 1928 Republican Party platform stated: "The improper use of money in governmental and political affairs is a great national evil. One of the most effective remedies for this abuse is publicity in all matters touching campaign contributions and expenditures" (Republican Party 1928, para. 91).

Such sentiments continue to be expressed today. Ann McBride decries the "corrupt campaign finance system" (1995, 15), and others point to the undue influence that special interests, "big business," and campaign consulting firms have on the initiative process (Thomas 1990; Boehmke 2005; Hoesly 2005). According to David Magleby and Kelly Patterson (1998), forced disclosure deals with these problems.

Second, under the banner of "more is better," it is claimed that information on contributions will further assist rational voters in deciding how to vote (Gerber and Lupia 1999). According to Arthur Lupia (1994) and Herbert Simon (1957), voters are cognitively limited decision makers, processing only a small fraction of the information to which they are exposed. Rather than engaging in a comprehensive information search and then deliberating to achieve an optimal choice, individuals tend to satisfice, relying on cues to make judgments.

These cues take several different forms, including expert and celebrity opinion (Magleby and Patterson 1998), media messages (Magleby 1989; Lupia 1992, 1994; Bowler and Donovan 1994; Gerber and Lupia 1995; Joslyn and Haider-Markel 2000), and, most relevant to this study, groups' opposition to or support for initiative campaigns (Miller, Wlezien, and Hildreth 1991; Gimpel 1998; Rob and Haider-Markel 2003). According to Grant Davis-Denny (2005), without such information journalists, scholars, regulators, and voters cannot uncover the economic interests behind a campaign, information that may be important for voters.

Yet there is little evidence that disclosure is effective (Schmidt 1989; Schultz 2005). According to Donald Gross and Robert Goidel (2003), voters are no more trusting of the political process and no better informed as a result of disclosure. Moreover, the benefits of disclosure also require an electorate that both knows such information is available and consults it in the decision-making process (Gais and Malbin 1997). Since the advent of these campaign-finance laws, there is little evidence indicating either condition as it relates to ballot initiatives. In fact, Gross and Goidel characterize the expectation that voters will access disclosure records as "absurd" (2003, 18).

Such issues are particularly important given the potential costs associated with campaign-finance laws. Indeed, more than thirty years ago Herbert Alexander (1976) warned against the "chilling effect" of such laws on free speech and citizen participation. He described a situation in which citizens might be reluctant to participate or speak for fear of unintentionally violating laws they knew little about or did not understand. Applied to disclosure, speech and association might also be "chilled" by limiting the involvement (through contributions) of contributors who are averse to revealing their personal information out of privacy concerns or conceivably the revelation of their secret ballot. Thus, a cost-benefit ratio may lean heavily toward costs with little to no return.

Unfortunately, the effects and effectiveness of disclosure laws related to ballot issues remain rife with opinions, assumptions, and assertions, but little research. Indeed, the literature on campaign finance and disclosure focuses overwhelmingly on candidate elections, while nearly ignoring ballot issues or assuming the dynamics are the same, and even in the candidate context we know little about how disclosure works in practice (LaRaja 2007). Raymond La Raja observes, "There have been no empirical studies, for example, about the effect of disclosure on important political outcomes such as voter knowledge and trust" (2007, 236). According to Jeffrey Milyo, this dearth of research is problematic: "It is difficult to evaluate the desirability of either current laws or proposed reforms when the potential costs of various policies have been completely ignored by scholars and policy makers alike" (1999, 537).

Therefore, my research reported here examines some of the assumptions inherent in discussions of campaign-finance disclosure laws as they relate to ballot issues. Specifically, it tests the theory that mandatory disclosure contributes to "better" (that is, more informed) voters by (a) examining respondents' support for disclosure, (b) exploring the idea of the "chilling" nature of disclosure (if respondents are less likely to support initiative campaigns in the face of mandatory disclosure), (c) measuring knowledge of disclosure laws and access to disclosed information, and (d) investigating these issues in the context of specific ballot issues.

Methods

To pursue these lines of inquiry, I carried out by telephone an opinion-and-knowledge survey of citizens in six states--California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Washington--and a content analysis of information sources available to Colorado voters during the 2006 campaign season (discussed later in detail).

I chose the states surveyed for their geographic and ideological diversity. According to the 2006 Book of the States (Council of State Governments 2006), these six states included three divided state governments (California, Colorado, and Massachusetts), one in which the executive and legislative branches were controlled by Democrats (Washington), and two in which both branches were controlled by Republicans (Florida and Ohio). Citizens in all six states voted on ballot issues in the November 2006 election, ranging from economic policies, such as the minimum wage, to social issues, such as marriage amendments. All six states require disclosure of issue-campaign contributors; the disclosed information includes the contributor's name and address as well as his or her employer's name; and all six publish the lists of contributors on a state Web site.

One note about design is in order. To research issues like the ones considered in this article (particularly a possible chilling effect), it would be highly desirable to compare the survey responses of those individuals in states with disclosure to the responses of those individuals in states without disclosure. However, all states with ballot issues require disclosure, negating the use of a control group. It may be possible in future research to approximate a control-group design, but the limited diversity in state laws does not facilitate such a design at this time.

Sample

The sample includes 2,221 respondents proportionately stratified by state population (California, n = 938; Colorado, n = 125; Florida, n = 498; Massachusetts, n = 174; Ohio, n = 314; Washington, n = 172). Respondents were contacted via random digit dialing. All participants were at least eighteen years old and screened into the sample using the "youngest male/oldest female" method. Table 1 includes descriptive statistics on the respondents' demographic characteristics. Given the sampling plan, I analyzed results using...

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