The Constitution says that voters elect their legislators. Practical experience of American politics says that money does, too.
Special interests of all kinds make contributions to candidates. Those dollars help candidates pay people to run their campaigns and buy the ads and signs that earn the candidates name recognition - which means that voters will be more likely to vote for them on the ballot this November.
CEP cares about energy dollars from special interests, in particular. Since you are reading our blog, you probably care about them, too... so! We want to help you look up these records.
Here is the link for the website used for campaign finance data. This allows you to access and search by company, individual contributor or legislator.
http://www.accesskansas.org/srv-campaignfinance/index.do
1. On the first pull-down menu, select "itemized contributions."
2. Where it reads, "Pertaining to," pull down the menu and choose either the house or senate.
3. Now type in the last and/or first name of the person you are wanting to research.
*OR when you get to this page and want to search a specific contributor instead, follow these instructions. For example, type "Westar" or "Kansas Chamber of Commerce" into the "contributor name" box.
Then click the box on the bottom right that says "subtotals for candidate." This will give you the total of all the donations associated with this contributor - some of them have different incarnations, such as the business itself, or its PAC. Those donations can be used for different election expenses. The system lumps them all together and shows you how much they gave to that candidate.
4. You may either search manually the dates you want to know about, or you may choose the specific election cycle on the pull-down menu.
Remember, this list can be just a little misleading. It's not entirely comprehensive. For example, individual employees of a corporation and their families can also give to campaigns. This info is hard to aggregate unless you actually know every single individual contributor listed and whom they work for.
What gets reported? Donations over a grand total of $50. Everything under $50 is unreported - which, if you are, say, a union employee who donates $4 per month for 12 months, then you have donated $48, and if there are thousands of union employees doing the same - well, that adds up.
In addition, this contribution database does not reflect issue advertising. In Kansas, issue advertising is not reported. Political advertising actually says "Vote for X," while issue advertising stops just short. It might tell you how great or how awful X is, but it doesn't use the V word in a specific sense. So corporation Z can use however much $$$ they want in issue advertising, and it won't be reported.
If you have any additional questions about campaign finance, another great source is the Kansas Ethics Commission.
Want to know more about issues of energy and environment in the current campaign? Then check out CEP's handy-dandy selection of voter guides to state and national candidates.
Remember, regardless of your position on these issues, the most important thing is that you get out and vote. Period.
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