Sunshine

The Illinois Sunshine Database makes it easier than ever for voters to find out who is funding candidates for state office in Illinois. The database consists of all contributions and expenditures reported by incumbents and challengers for constitutional office, state legislature and state Supreme and Appellate Court, as well as legislative caucus committees and the two principle state political parties.

All data in the Sunshine Database is derived from the official semi-annual campaign finance disclosure reports filed by political committees with the Illinois State Board of Elections. Most of the data has been modified to make it easier to use:

• The staff of the Sunshine Project and the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform standardized the names of the largest and most frequent donors. This facilitates searches for all contributions and transfers made by a single donor.
• Disclosure reports originally filed on paper were manually entered into the database. Especially for legislative races, our database is the most complete in the state.
• The database is divided into two-year election cycles, to facilitate searches for receipts and expenditures around a particular legislative session or campaign season.
• Contributions and expenditures include in-kind giving of goods and services. For instance, if a donor has contributed a mailing, the value of the mailing is included in both the receipts data and among expenditures. This gives a more complete view of resources available to and used by candidates for office.