• February 29, 2008

Nonprofit group MAPLight.org has launched a widget for tracking presidential campaign contributions to help make fundraising more transparent.

The Presidential Money Race Widget can be embedded in blogs as well as media and political sites to keep tabs on campaign donations. As of Feb. 25, the fund-raising widget showed Barack Obama leading with $140.5 million in contributions, followed by Clinton ($138 million), McCain ($54.8 million) and Huckabee ($12.9 million).

MAPLight attempts to shed light on the connection between money and politics by correlating contributions to members of Congress with how they vote on bills. It has previously developed widgets for tracking donations to congressional candidates.

--Mark Walsh