How we did it

To report and write about campaign contributions in the Arkansas governor’s race, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reviewed and analyzed more than 113,000 political donations.

The data is publicly available for download on the Arkansas secretary of state’s website at https://financial-disclosures.sos. arkansas.gov/#/index. State political candidates are required to report campaign contributions, spending and other information there.

The newspaper used the most current data, campaign contributions through June 30, downloaded from the secretary of state’s website on Sept. 21.

The next quarterly campaign finance reports for state candidates are due Oct. 15. Candidates begin reporting monthly in 2022. Party primaries are May 24, with the General Election is Nov. 8, 2022.

To examine in-state versus out-of-state donations to candidates, the newspaper considered only contributions that contained names and addresses. All data was used for campaign donation totals.

The secretary of state’s office through its software vendor corrected an error last month in the campaign contribution data, discovered during the newspaper’s reporting.

Thousands of small contributions, which carried no names or addresses, most of them less than $50, were identified in the data as donated from residents of the state of Maine, designated “ME.” The incorrect Maine designation, in a Sept. 10 download of campaign finance data, was found on 72,592 entries, totaling almost $1.7 million.

Actually, according to a secretary of state’s office spokesman Kevin Niehaus, candidates aren’t required by law to enter name and address information for contributions under $50, and the software doesn’t allow them to enter it. So it’s unknown where the smaller donations originated.

After fixes to the campaign finance disclosure software, contributions without donor names and addresses now correctly don’t include a state-of-origin designation, according to a data download Friday.