Independent and Nonpartisan
About us
Money Behind the Ballot is an independent, nonpartisan student organization. We take public campaign finance filings and public vote records — documents already open to anyone, but written so that almost nobody can read them — and turn them into something a person can actually use before they vote.
We do not tell you who to vote for. We think you will decide that better with the receipts in front of you.
What we hold ourselves to
Every number is traceable
Each profile links to the Federal Election Commission filings its figures come from, so you can check us against the primary source. If we cannot source a figure, we do not publish it.
Written to be understood
We target a ninth-grade reading level and test for it. Complexity in the filings is not an excuse for complexity here.
No money from the people we cover
We accept nothing from candidates, parties, PACs, or lobbying firms. Our funding sources are listed publicly.
We publish our mistakes
Corrections are posted at the top of the affected page and stay there. We do not quietly edit.
Who runs this
Money Behind the Ballot is an independent student-led organization. It was founded and is run by Bassel Obeidat, a student in Wisconsin.
I started it because finding out who funds a member of Congress is harder than it should be. The information is public, but it lives in filings written for lawyers, and almost nobody outside politics ever reads them. That is not an excuse for voters not to know, and this site exists to fix the problem.
We are not funded by anyone. The site is built and maintained by students in their own time, and it costs little more than a domain name to run. We accept no money from candidates, parties, PACs, or lobbying firms, and if that ever changes, our funding sources will be listed on this page.
What this data can and cannot tell you
A donation is not proof of a favor, and a vote that matches a donor is not proof the donor bought it. Plenty of groups give money to politicians who already agree with them. What the filings and vote records show is a pattern of relationships — who funds whom, and how the votes line up. What you make of that pattern is up to you.
We also cannot show you everything. Some political spending is legally permitted to stay anonymous, and it appears in no filing at all. Where that is likely to matter, we say so on the page.