When the nation's shale-drilling boom began six years ago, few Americans knew how oil and gas companies were able to extract such vast quantities of oil and gas with historic efficacy. Fewer, for that matter, even cared.

Today, the industry's relentless pursuit of shale rock is hard to ignore. So too are the studies that link its preferred extraction technique, hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), to water contamination, air pollution, earthquakes, and greenhouse gas emissions. These concerns have led dozens of local governments—from Colorado to New York and Pennsylvania—to ban fracking outright. Voters in two California counties and in Denton, Texas, may add to that tally next week, when they decide whether to outlaw fracking.

City and county-level ballot initiatives may seem like small beans, but the energy industry's response suggests otherwise. In each race, it's ludicrously outspending its opponents—fearful, perhaps, if these voters can beat the fracking industry at the ballot box, it would signal to other threatened communities that these sorts of fights are worth picking.

Fossil fuel giants Chevron, Aera Energy, ExxonMobil, and Occidental, among others, have poured more than $7 million into a coalition—Californians for Energy Independence—fighting the proposed measures in California. In Santa Barbara County (pop. 435,700), opponents have raised over $5.7 million to fight the proposed ban, beating supporters by a roughly 19-1 margin.

That's a staggering amount of money—even in the prohibitively expensive American political climate. As supporters have pointed out, the amount raised in Santa Barbara is more than three times as much as it took on average to win a seat in the House last election cycle, according to Open Secrets. Indeed, industry spending on the ballot question far exceeds the amount raised in each of the state's 53 congressional races this fall.