One published media report this month said the campaign to legalize marijuana in California had raised $18 million. Within days, other major news outlets pegged the total at just one-third that amount, while a nonprofit campaign watchdog group said the figure was $11 million.
Why the conflicting numbers?
It’s complicated. And it points to the growing difficulty of tracking funds in California campaigns, despite – and in some respects because of – election fundraising disclosure requirements that are among the most extensive in the nation.
One factor in the case of Proposition 64, the pro-legalization initiative on the November ballot, has been a proliferation of committees filing reports each time they move funds between groups promoting or opposing the measure. That’s led to millions of dollars being counted twice and has made it difficult to track the origins of some of the money.