Campaign Disclosure

How to Follow the Money

Tracking the money spent by candidates and political campaigns in California can be complicated. The following resources will get you started:

State Campaign Finances

• Campaign filing schedules, published by the Fair Political Practices Commission, shows when campaign finance reports are due to be disclosed.

• Cal-Access is the California Secretary of State's campaign finance disclosure web site. Here you can view, download or print campaign finance reports filed by state candidates, officeholders, parties, PACs or proposition campaigns. The site includes all reports filed electronically since 2000.

• Advanced Search is the section of the Cal-Access site where the public can search contributions by a variety of fields, such as name, occupation, employer, date, amount, city or zip code. Expenditures can also be searched and all data on this site can be downloaded and exported for offline analysis.

• A User's Manual provides additional tips for using the Cal-Access web site.

• Contribution and voluntary expenditure limits were enacted in 2000 through Prop 34. The Fair Political Practices Commission is responsible for revising the limits in January of every odd-numbered year.

• Maplight is a nonpartisan, California-based nonprofit group tracking state and federal political money and its potential influence on legislative decisions.

• Follow the Money is a nonpartisan web site hosted by the National Institute for Money in State Politics that publishes state campaign finance information for candidates from all fifty states.

Federal Campaign Finances

• The Federal Election Commission is where candidates for federal office file campaign disclosure reports. Entites that contribute to federal campaigns, such as PACs and political parties file with the FEC as well.

• OpenSecrets is a nonpartisan web site hosted by the Center for Responsive Politics, providing analysis of individual candidates' finances as well as overall federal campaign finance trends.

View Historic Top Contributor Data

• CVF's archived "Follow the Money" section - featuring the California Voter Foundation's top contributor data on state propositions since 1998.

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This page was first published on January 27, 2006 | Last updated on May 4, 2012
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