FAIRHOPE, Ala. — With city elections less than three weeks away, one place to get hard data about the crowded field of local candidates is no farther away than a computer keyboard.

“Access to campaign finance data enables voters to make informed choices and hold politicians accountable,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, which publishes an annual study of campaign disclosure data in all 50 states. “Having the data arrive in a digital format enables disclosure agencies to place it on the Internet where it can be accessed immediately by the public.”

Alabama does not currently provide for such digital reporting, but local campaign disclosure information is available online the day after paper copies are filed.

“It’s great that voters in Baldwin County have access to campaign finance reports online,” said Will Barrett, program manager for CVF, who recently evaluated the county’s online campaign report system at the request of the Fairhope Courier. “Reviewing campaign records from your home when you have the time to do so is far more convenient than having to visit the elections office during business hours and request records.”

Many candidate reports in the Fairhope contests for mayor and City Council are now online, and the most recent reports will be available a few days before the Aug. 26 elections.

Alabama law requires that candidates for municipal office must file two sets of campaign finance disclosure reports, unless they do not raise the threshold $1,000 amount.

The first reports were due July 14, and the second ones must be filed between Aug. 15 and 21.

After receiving the paper copies, the Baldwin County Probate Court scans and posts the reports on its Web site the following day, a court employee said.

“As far as the usability of the site, some of the same issues that we’ve found in our Grading State Disclosure 2007 report about Alabama’s state disclosure system also apply to the county’s system,” Barrett said. “For example, the scanned copies of reports posted to the (Web site) don’t allow the public to search, sort, or download the data into a spreadsheet program, making it harder to easily find specific donors or transactions.”

The assessment of Alabama’s state system was conducted by the Campaign Disclosure Project, which seeks to bring greater transparency and accountability to money in state politics, and is a collaboration of CVF, the UCLA School of Law and the Center for Governmental Studies, according to a press release accompanying the most recent report in October 2007.

The project evaluates, grades and ranks each state in four categories: campaign disclosure laws; electronic filing programs; public access to campaign finance data; and disclosure Web site usability.

The 2007 report stated that campaign disclosure data is improving in states across the county — but not in Alabama.

“Alabama received its fourth consecutive ‘F’ and ranked 49th overall, dropping 15 places in the Online Contextual and Technical Usability category rankings,” the report stated. “Alabama failed again to strengthen its campaign disclosure law, despite bills introduced in 2007’s contentious regular legislative session to enact electronic filing and to ban transfers between political action committees. Contributing to the consistently low rank in the Law category are a lack of mandatory auditing of campaign statements and a lack of independent expenditure reporting. The law does require the disclosure of the names and addresses of contributors, but candidates are not required to disclose a contributor’s occupation or employer, the campaign’s itemized debts or expenditures made by sub-vendors.”

Some people have had trouble accessing information on the local court Web site, a court employee said.

In fact, Barrett said he had to do his analysis from a home computer because the system informed him he would have to download a software package for it to be compatible with this office computer.

“Searching Fair Campaign Forms will take longer to complete,” the county’s search page for those records also notes. “Expect delays between results.”

Although the county online system can be frustrating for some, most people can usually obtain the campaign reports through the help functions on the system or when they call for assistance, the employee said.

“While the system could be made more user-friendly, Baldwin County is certainly providing a great public service that voters should take advantage of as they prepare to vote,” Barrett said.

Editor’s note: The Fairhope Courier plans to release excerpts of all campaign finance disclosure reports before the Aug. 26 elections in the newspaper and online at www.baldwincountynow.com.