March 21, 2004

NEW YORK -- It costs you nothing to discover how much your neighbors are contributing to candidates for president.

Just visit www.fundrace.org on the Internet and type your address and ZIP code into the ''Neighbor Search'' tool. You will get a list of what those who live closest to you gave to any of the candidates last year, provided the amount was at least $200.

Your nearest neighbors are listed first, thanks to technology that matches street addresses with longitude and latitude data.

Visitors can also search by names.

Federal election law makes the snooping possible. Presidential candidates are required to disclose contributions of $200 or more, and the Federal Election Commission makes databases available for downloading.

Campaign contribution data through Dec. 31 are currently available, and the site's developer, Michael Frumin, says he plans to add more information as it is disclosed.

Frumin said Friday that 30,000 to 40,000 people have conducted some 100,000 searches since the feature was launched Wednesday.

Other sites have more extensive databases and search capabilities.

Opensecrets.org, run by the Center for Responsive Politics, lets you search by state, occupation or employer and has data going back to 1989. It also permits searching of so-called soft money donations to party organizations, in addition to direct contributions to candidates.

The Federal Election Commission site, www.fec.gov, also lets you do that using its ''advanced search.'' AP

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