Who runs it

An independent, nonpartisan student organization founded and run by Bassel Obeidat, a student in Wisconsin. It is not incorporated. It is not affiliated with any campaign, party, committee, or advocacy group, and it accepts no money from candidates, parties, political action committees, or lobbying firms.

Where the figures come from

Filings with the Federal Election Commission, fetched from the Commission’s own systems. Every profile links to the FEC page for that candidate so you can check any figure against the source. We do not estimate, model, or project numbers. Where we have not measured something, the page says so.

What the figures mean, and what they don’t

A donation is not proof of anything. That an organization gave money to a member of Congress, and that the member later voted a particular way, does not establish that one caused the other. Both facts are public record. The link between them is not, and this site does not claim one. Votes appear beside funding so you can see both.

Several figures are floors. Money that organizations collect and direct to a campaign is measured only for the conduits we have swept so far. Any “organized” share is therefore at least that much, and pages say “at least” for that reason.

Industry labels are our editorial judgment. The FEC records that a committee belongs to a corporation. It does not record the industry. That grouping is ours, kept as a published list and described on the methodology page. Roughly a third of corporate money is left unlabeled rather than guessed at.

Nothing here is voting advice. We do not endorse, oppose, rank, or recommend candidates, and we do not take requests to investigate particular people. The same filings are published for everyone.

Accuracy, and being wrong

Figures are checked against the Commission after they are compiled, and the site’s own consistency rules run before anything is published. That does not catch everything. The site is provided as is, without any warranty that every figure is correct or current. Filings are also amended after the fact, so a figure that was accurate when published can stop being accurate.

If you believe something is wrong, please tell us. Confirmed errors are published on the corrections page and left there.

If you are named on this site and believe a figure about you is wrong, write to contact@moneybehindtheballot.org with the filing that shows it. A documented correction gets made and published.

Reusing what’s here

The campaign finance data is published by the Federal Election Commission and is in the public domain. So are the official congressional portraits. Nobody needs our permission to use them, and we claim no rights over them.

The writing, design, and code are ours and are not public domain. Quote us with a link, as you would any publication. Journalists and researchers are welcome to use the figures. If you want to republish the compiled dataset as a whole rather than cite figures from it, ask us first. We have not settled how that should be licensed.

Availability

The site is run by one student. It may be offline, incomplete, or out of date at any time.

Changes

These terms change when the site does. The date below moves when they do.

What this site is, and isn’t