How It Works
01
Search A Federal Politician
Enter a name and we query public candidate records for likely matches. You then select the exact office and state profile before loading evidence.
02
Load FEC Filing Data
We pull totals, donor rows (Schedule A), disbursements (Schedule B), and independent expenditures (Schedule E) from the FEC API.
03
Load Vote Records
For House members, we use Congress.gov roll call data. For Senators, we use the official Senate roll call feed and match vote rows by name and state.
04
Surface The Records Clearly
The core analysis remains grounded in reported figures. We organize totals, donors, spending, and vote data so it is easier to inspect than browsing raw government interfaces directly.
05
Keep Recent Profiles Ready
To keep repeat lookups fast and to avoid rebuilding the same profile on every visit, recent profile snapshots are reused for a short period.
Limitations
- Federal only: FEC covers House, Senate, and Presidential candidates. State legislators are not in scope.
- Individual donations: We show individual donors from Schedule A. PAC and dark money flows are separate and harder to trace.
- Vote coverage: House rows come from Congress.gov and Senate rows come from the official Senate roll call feed. Some profiles will still have gaps when the public record does not return a clean member match.
- Data delay: FEC filings are not real-time — there is typically a reporting lag of weeks to months.
- Comparisons: Peer comparisons only appear when the visible public record is broad enough to make them defensible.