Ballotpedia:Our partnership with Circa Victor
This page outlines Ballotpedia's partnership with Circa Victor. In 2020, Ballotpedia partnered with Circa Victor to provide comprehensive coverage of independent expenditures in federal battleground races.
What are independent expenditures?
- See also: Independent expenditure
An independent expenditure is money spent on political advertising in support of or against a particular candidate. An independent expenditure comes from outside a candidate's own election organization and is not coordinated with a particular candidate's campaign, authorized candidate committee or political party committee.[1] Generally, there is no limit placed on independent expenditures.[2]
Individuals, political committees, Super PACs, qualified nonprofit corporations (such as 501(c)(4)'s) and, since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, corporations and labor unions are permitted to make independent expenditures. Corporations, labor organizations and individuals or businesses with federal government contracts, however, may not make independent expenditures.
Generally, independent expenditures must identify the person paying for the advertisement. Political action committees and other persons have specific reporting requirements associated with independent expenditures. There are no limits on the amount an individual or group may spend on independent expenditures.[2][3]
While it is possible to search the Federal Election Commission's (FEC) website for information on independent expenditures, it can be difficult to get a good sense for exactly how much is being spent, as there are different types of independent expenditures with different filing requirements.
Why is it so difficult to track independent expenditures?
Independent expenditures can be difficult to track for several reasons, including:
- Coordinated versus uncoordinated expenditures: Advertisements produced in support of a candidate by a political action committee (PAC) fall under different reporting requirements depending on whether the PAC is directly associated with the candidate or not. These are referred to as coordinated or uncoordinated expenditures, respectively.
- Differences between form types: Different types of expenditures (electioneering, digital, etc.) must be reported using different types of forms.
- Changes to data over time: Some types of forms must be filed within 24 or 48 hours of the expenditure being made. These expenditures are sometimes entered as estimated rather than exact values, meaning that a new report must be filed each time the amount changes.
- Delay between reporting and payment: Expenditures must be reported when they are made, but can be paid for later in the cycle. This creates a debt that the committee must continue to report until it is paid off.
- Duplicate declarations: Depending on when an expenditure is made, a PAC may be required to declare it multiple times within a monthly, quarterly, or annual report.
These reporting requirements can lead to duplicate records at the FEC for a single expenditure, which can make tracking and analyzing expenditures difficult.
Circa Victor
Circa Victor uses a direct pipeline to the FEC to collect raw filings as soon as they are generated and import them to their system in real-time. Circa Victor then standardizes and indexes each expenditure, assigning it a unique ID. Past filings are then scanned to eliminate any duplicate records. This allows Circa Victor to provide up-to-the-minute independent expenditure data which is more current than information exported from the Federal Election Commission.
