[EL] Technology to facilitate compliance

[Milyo, Jeffrey D.]

Since this report was alluded to earlier in this thread, I hope you'll tolerate the self-promoting links:

Here's what happens when you ask novices to fill out campaign finance disclosure forms:
http://www.ij.org/about/2030; Short version: it isn't pretty...

As a non-lawyer who has perused various state disclosure laws for citizen groups engaged in ballot measures and grass roots lobbying, one obvious problem is that the forms and instructions are (in general) not intentionally written in a manner that would be accessible to the general population.   My favorite example is from Massachusetts Grassroots Lobbying disclosure regulations (circa 2010); the SoS provides an educational document for potential filers that consists of i) the verbatim text of the lobbying law and ii) a disclaimer not to rely on the contents and instead to consult a lawyer (it's like they're saying, "we're not even sure we cut and pasted this right").  Further, the first sentence of the grass roots lobbying section is so impenetrable that it has a "readability score" of 0.9 on a 100-point scale (the Gettysburg Address scores 70).  Even better, the MA SoS provides a handy flowchart for potential filers to help them understand if they must disclose their activities, etc.; in the end, the flowchart indicates that you either: 1)  may have to file, or 2)  may not have to file (helpful!).  The full report is here; for a laugh, see pages 11-14:  http://www.ij.org/images/pdf_folder/washington/mowing_down_the-grassroots.pdf.


Jeff Milyo
Middlebush Professor of Social Sciences
Department of Economics
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211
573-882-7785
http://web.missouri.edu/~milyoj/






From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Jon Roland
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 11:51 AM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Technology to facilitate compliance

On first impression that would seem to be so, especially to one who is well-educated and experienced, but even for those there are a lot of hidden traps for the unwary and unlucky (or dissident). Try out those online forms and instructions on persons new to the field and see how they react.
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered. - Attributed to Lyndon B. Johnson or Hubert Humphrey, but unconfirmed.

On 08/15/2011 11:27 AM, Trevor Potter wrote:

such activity can be done at the federal level ... without lawyers or accountants.




-- Jon



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