Topeka ? Voters in Kansas won’t know until late October who contributed to candidates in the final, and often frantic, 11 days leading to Tuesday’s primaries.

And that concerns Carol Williams, executive director of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission.

“It doesn’t give the public a true view of the activity that is going on,” Williams said of the current law. “The money is being spent now.”

Under Kansas campaign finance law, state candidates must file reports that show where their money is coming from and how they are spending it for the period covering Jan. 1, 2006, through July 20, 2006. Those reports were released Monday.

But the contributions they have and will receive from July 20 through Tuesday won’t be reported until Oct. 30, which is months after the primaries and just eight days before the Nov. 7 general election.

And the money being contributed and spent in the 11 days before the general election won’t be reported until Jan. 10, 2007.

The so-called blackout period has helped garner Kansas failing grades for campaign finance disclosure from the Los Angeles-based Center for Governmental Studies, which works with states to try to improve reporting laws.

The lack of timely disclosure often roils Kansas politics as new groups – some from out of state – powerful interests and below-the-radar funding techniques have worked to influence elections with contributions in the final days of campaigns.

For example, in 2002 high-profile abortion doctor George Tiller of Wichita contributed more than $150,000 through a political committee to try to defeat Republican Phill Kline in the attorney general’s race. But the contributions, which were made four days before the election, were not reported until after the election. Kline won in an extremely close contest against Democrat Chris Biggs.

That kind of last-minute financing has become more prevalent in Kansas in recent years, officials said.

Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, said 35 other states required timely disclosure of major expenditures in the final days of campaigns.

“That is when voters need the information,” Stern said. “You hear politicians saying they want complete disclosure; you in Kansas are far from it.”

During the last legislative session, lawmakers approved a mammoth election and campaign finance bill that included greater disclosure of contributions in campaigns’ last days.

But Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the measure, saying she supported the increased campaign finance disclosure but opposed other portions of the bill that she said would have made it harder to cast advance ballots.

“If the Legislature sends me real campaign finance reform, I will sign it. This bill is not real reform,” Sebelius said.

Sebelius is voluntarily filing reports that show the money she is raising during the “blackout” period. She faces no opponent in the primary, but she has vowed to file the reports before the Nov. 7 general election too.

Williams, with the state ethics agency, said she had not heard of any other candidates doing the same.

She said the contribution reporting blackout periods before the primary and general elections were a vestige of a former age – back in the 1970s when it was more difficult to amass and distribute information.

Now, she said, with the ability to use e-mail, the Internet and fax machines to transmit information, the technology is there to report contributions hours after they are made.

“It makes the information more relevant to the voter to have it out there,” she said.