Campaign Finance Tools
NICAR 2014
Aaron Bycoffe (bycoffe@gmail.com | @bycoffe)
http://bycoffe.com/nicar14
Federal Elections
Dashboards
Electronic Filings Dashboard
http://bycoffe.com/fec-dashboard
- Requires NY Times API key
- Desktop alerts for new filings
Itemizer
http://itemizer.herokuapp.com/
- Sortable
- Separate pages for receipts/disbursements
- Deep-linking to line items
FECh
http://nytimes.github.io/Fech/
A Ruby parser for electronic candidate, PAC and party campaign filings from the Federal Election Commission.
filing_id = 909765
filing = Fech::Filing.new(909765)
filing.download
# Show the filing's summary (form type, date filed, etc.)
filing.summary
# Show rows of a certain type
filing.rows_like(/sa/)
filing.rows_like(/sb/)
# And then filter (or do other things) with those rows
filing.rows_like(/sb/).select { |x| x[:expenditure_purpose_descrip] == "PAYROLL" }
FECh-Search
https://github.com/huffpostdata/fech-search
A Ruby library for searching electronic filings from the Federal Election Commission.
committee_id = "C00000935"
# List all of this committee's filings
filings = Fech::Search.new(:committee_id => committee_id)
FECh-FTP
https://github.com/dwillis/fech-ftp
A Ruby wrapper for Federal Election Commission FTP data.
# Get summary data for candidates
cands = Fech::Candidate.detail(2014)
# Get summary data for committees
cmtes = Fech::Committee.detail(2014)
OpenSecrets.org
- Bulk campaign finance data (originally from the FEC), including unique identifiers for individuals
- Summary pages for:
- Candidates for federal office
- PACs
- Industries
- Interest groups
Realtime Federal Campaign Finance
http://realtime.influenceexplorer.com/
- Latest electronic filings submitted to the FEC
- Filterable by candidate, committee, committee type, date and more
- Allows amended filings to be filtered out
State
Campaign finance data for state offices is handled separately by each state.
State agencies
A list of all state campaign finance agencies: http://bitly.com/bundles/bycoffe/1