Posted on Sat, Mar. 20, 2004

CAMPAIGN 2004 CONTRIBUTIONS
Neighbor's pick can be found online



(AP) -- It costs nothing to discover how much your neighbors are contributing to candidates for president.

Just visit the website http://www.fundrace.org/ 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 a technology called geocoding, which 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 download.

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

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





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