Who is watching the financing of campaigns? Here's a list to explore:
Campaign Finance Information Center
Extensive resources on campaign finance. Operated by Investigative Reporters and Editors organization.http://www.campaignfinance.org/
Campaign Finance Institute
Dedicated to research for democracy, the CFI provides comprehensive news, graphs and graphics, fact-based scholarship. http://www.cfinst.org/
Campaign Legal Center
Primarily a news and educational resource, the Campaign Legal Center offers nonpartisan analyses of issues and represents the public interest in administrative, legislative, and legal proceedings. http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/
Center for Public Integrity
Originally a campaign finance watchdog, this site now includes investigative journalism with thorough analysis and summary statistics. http://www.iwatchnews.org/
Common Cause
The clean government citizens’ lobby with extensive resources on campaign finance and electoral politics and an excellent soft money database, searchable by contributor, state, or industry featuring candidate profiles and ratings and report on campaign finance. http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4741359
CQ Moneyline
A highly recommended fee-requring interactive site including data on soft money and 527 groups, making it easy to search by candidate, committee, state, or contributor. http://pml.cq.com/
Federal Election Commission
The original site of the FEC provides complete databases of hard money contributions for each election since 1994. http://www.fec.gov/
Follow the Money
This site, operated by the National Institute on Money and State Politics provides selected data on contributions to state-level political campaigns. Search interactively for candidates, contributors, and interest groups involved in gubernatorial and state legislative races for most states. http://www.followthemoney.org/
MapLight
MapLight reveals money’s influence on politics through news on bills, legislators, interest groups, and companies. Their contribution information comes from Open Secrets. http://maplight.org/
Newsmeat
Primarily a journalism website, Newsmeat features political campaign searches by donor, candidate, or zipcode. http://www.newsmeat.com/
Open Secrets (Center for Responsive Politics)
A leading campaign finance watchdog site, mostly freely available, with searchable databases of contributors and candidates. http://www.opensecrets.org/index.php
Public Campaign
Public Campaign is an organization dedicated to campaign finance reform with reliable sources of information an links. http://www.publicampaign.org/
Political Money Line
Basically a new service tracking an extensive range of news and events in the campaign funding world. http://pml.cq.com/
Republic Report
The research arm of United Republic, a source of some compelling documentation of campaign dollars buying political outcomes. http://www.republicreport.org
Sunlight Foundation
Sunlight Foundation operates several different projects ranging from tracking political influence to allowing you to determine whose financing those political ads and emails you get. http://sunlightfoundation.com/