Review and refine Schedule A data on committee page

[noahmanger]

Goal: Finished designs for Schedule A data on committee pages (begun in issue #284 )

Criteria: Final consensus on what data is shown and how it will be shown.

Steps:

• Review designs with FEC
• Refine if necessary

[noahmanger]

Current design:

[noahmanger]

Other idea from the meeting: in-state vs. out-of-state totals.

[noahmanger]

Here's how it would look with totals by state. The only thing is that, obviously, this list could get very big. Is this something we want to do?

[jmcarp]

It seems like totals by state would be easier to express with a map.

[noahmanger]

I thought about that, but maps pose a number of design challenges (for example, hard to see northeastern states and western states having outsized visual weight). NPR did a great write-up here: http://blog.apps.npr.org/2015/05/11/hex-tile-maps.html

Also it depends what we want to show. If you want to easily see where the most money came from in terms of specific dollars, a simple table will be fastest. If you're interested in the geographic distribution, then maps are more helpful. Maybe there's a way to toggle between?

I could definitely see trying out NPR's hex-tile map idea though.

@shawnbot any thoughts on the best way to show the geography of contributions to a committee?

[shawnbot]

@noahmanger I really like the hexagon approach, though I do find it a little bit more gimmicky-looking than just the squares in NPR's write-up. I'm definitely a fan of cartograms in general for state maps, though.

[jmcarp]

Question for @LindsayYoung and/or @noahmanger: for the breakdown of contributions by size, the first bucket (< $200) will come from reports (form F3), and the other buckets will come from receipts (Schedule A), right?

Part 2: Are we good to use the buckets that @LindsayYoung proposed in #284, or do we want to run those by FEC? IIRC, Lindsay got those splits from the current FEC site, so I'm thinking they should be fine.

[PaulClark2]

Schedules
We like the "Total Contributed by State" section.
We'll need to include some explanation or footnote that these data are summed from transaction level data and not taken from the summary / detailed summary pages of reports.

Size of Contributions
The "$200 and under" category instead of "$1 – $200" is a fairly important distinction for us. The itemization threshold is "more than $200.00. We are flexible on the other categories.

Here's the logic we use for the Presidential Map

$200 and under - [unitemized total (detailed summary page) plus specific contributions from individuals where the absolute value is between 0 and 200] plus [(for jointfundraising proceeds, etc.) specific transferred contributions from individuals where the absolute value is between 0 and 200 plus unitemized lump sum transfers]

$200.01-$499 - sum of specific contributions from individuals where the absolute value is between $200.01 and $499.99

$500-$999 - sum of specific contributions from individuals where the absolute value is between $500 and $999.99

$1000-$1999 - sum of specific contributions from individuals where the absolute value is between $1000 and $1999.99

$2000 and over - sum of specific contributions from individuals where the absolute value is greater than or equal to $2000

Top Contributions
We aren't sure this provides much useful information. In many cases, both the individual contributors and the other committee contributors will be maxed out at the contribution limit. So, you can literally have pages and pages of maxed out

"Contributions" Tab
Will this tab eventually display disbursements, too, or will that be a separate tab? If it will eventually display both we'll need a more generic name for the tab.

[LindsayYoung]

For under 200 I think we will have to add schedue_a under 200 and unitemized for the correct totals for groups like Emily's List that disclose small donors on schedule A.

Right @PaulClark2 ?

[LindsayYoung]

I think people will like the "maxed out" list, But let's do user testing to see if users like the feature.

[PaulClark2]

@LindsayYoung yes we include the unitemized total from the detailed summary page in our under $200 total

[noahmanger]

I also think that people really want to see the top contributors. Even if it's pages of data, it's something that people want to see and expect to see, so better to have it than have them wonder what they're missing.

I'm going to do some thinking on what kind of cartogram might make sense.

[noahmanger]

Oh, and I see expenditures as being on another tab.

[shawnbot]

Unsubscribing for now, but feel free to tag me again if you want map input!

[PaulClark2]

@noahmanger @LindsayYoung top contributors: How do you decide what 10 to display when a committees has 100s of maxed out contributors? For 2013-2014, I looked at a candidate committee, C00330894, and a PAC, C00448696. The candidate committee has 269 contributions of $2,600 or more and the PAC has 139 contributions of $5,000 or more..

Or have I misunderstood and the top contributor list will be an unlimited number of contributors?

[noahmanger]

@PaulClark2 as designed, the list would include all maxed out contributors, but would paginate them (page controls at the bottom of the table). But I suppose this does raise the question of what the order should be. Do we alphabetize? Order by date? Or is there no way to do it that's not misleading? I suppose the danger is showing the first ten (sorted any way) and people inferring that those ten people are the major supporters of a committee.

[PaulClark2]

We'll probably need to think about this some more. I know I used "maxed out" but "top contributors" is a better description. Amy pointed out a contributor could "max out", get "un-maxed out" (refunds, reattributions, redesignations, etc.) and then be "re-maxed out."

These thoughts still linger: I think we are still stuck on not really seeing how this is useful to people to see a list of contributors with the same contribution amount --- useful enough to take up page real estate when a user that is really interested in "top contributors" can easily download the transactions and sort them.

[jmcarp]

A comment and a question about this:

• It's not clear that we want to break contributions down into committees and individuals. @LindsayYoung suggested the distinction of contributors with a committee ID versus contributors without. Lots of receipts come from a committee but don't include a committee ID--for example, for Romney 2011-2012, the table on the right would include contributions from "Bank of Georgetown", "SCM Associates", "American Rambler Productions", and "NBC News". Alternatively, we could aggregate committee contributors in the left table and non-committee individual contributors on the right, but then there wouldn't be a place to find non-committee non-individual contributors on this page--but maybe that's all right.
• The relevant column in the Schedule A table is contb_aggregate_ytd. Does this column always indicate YTD contributions, or is it sometimes cycle-to-date? Based on discussion this past Monday, it sounded like the value might change, or that different intervals are relevant for different committees. @PaulClark2 could you clarify? When do we want aggregates by year versus election cycle?

[noahmanger]

These are all good questions and I'm really not sure how to answer them. What do you think about just moving forward with the aggregate totals by Amount and State for now while we resolve the questions around Top Contributors? I don't want that to be a blocker.

[PaulClark2]

@noahmanger agreed. We should move forward on the aggregate totals by Amount and State.

[PaulClark2]

@jmcarp @LindsayYoung Josh we can use the line number in the SA row to determine the type of contributor. Generally, for Forms 3 & 3X contributions from individuals are reported on Line 11AI and contributions from other political committees, such as PACs, are reported on Line 11C. For Form 3P the line numbers are 17A and 17C.

[PaulClark2]

@jmcarp @LindsayYoung The "YTD" column can be either year-to-day or cycle-to-date. For candidate committees (Form 3 and Form 3P filers) it's cycle-to-date and for other political committees (Form 3X filers) it's year-to-date.

[LindsayYoung]

For Maxed out contributors, I think we should sort by amount descending and when there is a tie, show the most recent first. That way, it will feel fresh.

@PaulClark2 I am not seeing the SA row in the sched_a table, what is the name of that column?

For /v2/ I think we might want to change the names for cycle to date figures so they are labeled accordingly, For now, we can add that to the documentation.

[PaulClark2]

@LindsayYoung Oh ... SA (schedule a table). The column name is "line_num"

[LindsayYoung]

Thanks!