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Ballotpedia rolls out improved campaign finance data with Transparency USA
Contact: Kristen Vonasek, Director of Communications
Tel: (608) 255-0688
E-mail: Media@ballotpedia.org
Providing easy-to-follow state-level political funding information
Middleton, Wis. - March 9, 2020: Voters often want campaign finance information when studying their electoral options. When it comes to federal candidates, it is relatively easy to get that information because all federal candidates file campaign finance disclosures with one agency, the Federal Election Commission. Not so for candidates for state-level offices—such as governor or secretary of state—or state legislature. Here, there are 50 different state-level campaign finance agencies. Navigating these different portals can be tough.
Today, we are excited to announce a new project to make it easier for voters to understand campaign finance information about state-level and state legislative candidates. We are doing this via a partnership with Transparency USA for all state-level and state legislative candidates in Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio. Later in the year, we will add an additional six states.
With this new tool, powered by Transparency USA, voters in these states will be able to keep up with campaign finance information in a standardized, user-friendly format in close-to-real-time. Our hope is that this will make it much easier for voters to view campaign donations to state-level candidates in a convenient format.
Transparency USA, a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization, has standardized access to this information in an elegant way. This makes it so much easier for our readers to find this information on Ballotpedia’s profiles of each state-level candidate as well as on our profiles of state legislative candidates and elections. Readers can search by candidate, PAC, or donor to find out who’s giving, who’s getting, and how the money is being spent in their state. Check out TransparencyTexas.org, TransparencyNorthCarolina.org, and TransparencyOhio.org, with more states coming soon.
Available data
Voters will be able to see the following campaign finance data for all 2020 state-level candidates:
- Total contributions to each campaign
- Total expenditures from each campaign
- The top ten individuals or organizations contributing to each campaign
- The top ten individuals or organizations being paid by each campaign
- The number of donors to each campaign
- The number of payees from each campaign
Voters in Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio can see this information on their state-level candidate pages starting today. Ballotpedia is rolling out this information for an additional six other states–Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—ahead of their primaries.
About Ballotpedia
Ballotpedia is the online encyclopedia of American politics and elections. Its goal is to preserve and expand knowledge about politics by providing objective information about local, state, and federal politics and policies. Its content includes trustworthy information, covering government officials and the offices they hold, political issues and public policy, elections, and candidates. Headquartered in Middleton, Wisconsin, Ballotpedia was founded in 2006. It includes over 300,000 professionally authored encyclopedic articles that have garnered over 1 billion page views.
If you’d like more information, or to schedule an interview, please contact Ballotpedia's Director of Communications at media@Ballotpedia.org.
