This is a compliation of research of state-by-state campaign finance information technology systems surrounding disclosures, filings, and complaints. Ideally every jurisdiction would have fully electronic data with comprehensive search capabilities, JSON API endpoints, exportable files, and more... but many jurisdictions have little to no search capabilities or imaged paper forms manually uploaded to a server.
- Main Agency: Alabama Secretary of State
- Authority: State candidates, state PACs
- Public Searches
- Search by committee name: YES
- Search by contributor name: NO
- Search by contributor address: NO
- Search by vendor name: NO
- Public Access
- Registration: Image PDF
- Report Summary: Scrapeable HTML
- Report Contributions: Image PDF
- Report Expenditures: Image PDF
- Public analysis tools
- NONE
- Committee Filing
- Handwritten or typed PDF required
- No electronic filing
- Complaints
- Requires further research
- County and municipal filings appear to be filed with county probate courts and handled as court filings; requires further research
- State Campaign Finance Law: Fair Campaign Practices Act
- The FCPA requires candidates to file if they reach $25k (statewide), $10k (State Senate), $5k (State House, Circuit, or district office), or $1k for county or municipal office.
- Main Agency: Alaska Public Offices Commission
- Authority: State candidates, state PACs
- Public Searches
- Search by committee name: YES
- Search by contributor name: NO
- Search by contributor address: NO
- Search by vendor name: NO
- Public Access
- Registration: Image PDF
- Report Summary: Scrapeable HTML
- Report Contributions: Image PDF
- Report Expenditures: Image PDF
- Public analysis tools
- NONE
- Committee Filing
- Electronic filing accepted via myAlaska system
- Complaints
- Requires further research
- County and municipal filings appear to be filed with county probate courts and handled as court filings; requires further research
- State Campaign Finance Law:
Arizona Arkansas California
Colorado has an advanced and complex campaign finance reporting system named TRACER. It allows public searches by candidate, committee, contribution, expenditure, loan, penalty, complaint, race, registered agent, etc. It handles all races in all jurisdictions in the state. Committees can register online and are assigned a unique ID. Contributions can be uploaded using an "Electronic Data Interchange" (EDI) XML reporting specification. Nearly every search result page and report data page can be exported as CSV, XLS, PDF. Additionally, the SOS provides the ability to download all contributions, expenditures and loans for all campaigns as zipped CSVs. A 2008 RFP was awarded to Quest Information Systems to customize their FirstTuesday software. The amount of money is unknown, but there was an appropriation of $1,478,968 for FY08-09 to develop the software, plus an ongoing hosting charge.
- Main Agency: Colorado Secretary of State
- Authority: State candidates, state PACs, county jurisdictions
- Public Searches
- Search by committee name: YES
- Search by contributor name: YES
- Search by contributor address: NO
- Search by vendor name: YES
- Public Access
- Registration: HTML
- Report Summary: Scrapeable HTML
- Report Contributions: CSV, XLS, Text PDF, HTML
- Report Expenditures: CSV, XLS, Text PDF, HTML
- Public analysis tools
- Several reporting tools are available, such as overdue reports, contributions by employer, zipcode, etc. Advanced queries can be exported as XML, CSV, PDF, TIFF, MHTML web archive, Excel XLS, Word, or Image JPEG. These reports seem to group by name at best, and don't generate any graphical depictions.
- Committee Filing
- Electronic filing accepted via TRACER. "The Secretary of State’s office provides three ways to file campaign finance information electronically. You may submit information via regular data entry directly into TRACER; via electronic data interchange (EDI) with pre-approved Excel spreadsheets; or via EDI with XML. All filers may use EDI, but the technical requirements of EDI make it more practical for committees with very large numbers of contributions and expenditures. EDI enables the management of contributions and expenditures using specific spreadsheet templates or XML prior to report filing. Please contact the Campaign Finance Support Team at cpfhelp@sos.state.co.us for more information on EDI filing."
- Complaints
- Search; HTML summaries; image PDF files
- State Campaign Finance Law: Colorado Fair Campaign Practices Act
Connecticut Delaware Florida
Exporting results to Excel was extremely slow, saves files as .aspx
- Main Agency: Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission (State Ethics Commission) ("Georgia CFC")
- Authority: State offices, municipal offices
- Public Searches
- Search by committee name: YES
- Search by contributor name: YES
- Search by contributor address: YES
- Search by vendor name: YES
- Public Access
- Registration: HTML
- Report Summary: Scrapeable HTML
- Report Contributions: Text PDF, Scrapeable HTML, XLS
- Report Expenditures: Text PDF, Scrapeable HTML, XLS
- Public analysis tools
- Search by zipcode, report log of most recently filed reports, custom search for vendor gifts, lobbyist reports, personal financial reports and affidavits, business transaction reports, and late / non-filer reports
- Committee Filing
- Electronic filing...
- Complaints
- ...
- State Campaign Finance Law: ...
Hawaii Idaho Illinois
Like Colorado, Indiana uses a customized version of Quest Information Systems' FirstTuesday software. Full data downloads are available as zipped CSVs.
- Main Agency: Indiana Secretary of State
- Authority: State candidates, state PACs
- Public Searches
- Search by committee name: YES
- Search by contributor name: YES
- Search by contributor address: YES
- Search by vendor name: YES
- Public Access
- Registration: HTML
- Report Summary: Scrapeable HTML
- Report Contributions: CSV, XLS, Text PDF, HTML
- Report Expenditures: CSV, XLS, Text PDF, HTML
- Public analysis tools
- No reporting tools are available, but there is a general statistics screen that shows current filing stats.
- Committee Filing
- Electronic committee registration, but in a very user unfriendly form-like manner
- Electronic filing via EDI/XML uploads
- Complaints:
- State Campaign Finance Law:
Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan
- Main Agency: Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board
- Authority: State candidates, state PACs
- Public Searches
- Search by committee name: YES
- Search by contributor name: YES, very poor UI
- Search by contributor address: NO
- Search by vendor name: YES, but broken
- Public Access
- Registration: Image PDF or Text PDF
- Report Summary: Text PDF
- Report Contributions: Text PDF
- Report Expenditures: Text PDF
- Public analysis tools
- NONE
- Committee Filing
- Accepts electronic filing using required Campaign Finance Reporter Software which runs on Windows XP only. The software syncs with the CF Board's servers, and automatically identifies violations such as overcontributions or name-matches to lobbyists prohibited from contributing. Seems to be a heavily-manual process.
- Complaints
- Listed by date, but not searchable
- http://www.cfboard.state.mn.us/conagrm.html
- County and municipal filings are handled by counties. Hennepin County, for example, has an image PDF "database" but Ramsey County appears to just manually update a page with linked image PDFs. Many counties have no online presence, most likely requiring in-person visits.
- State Campaign Finance Law: Minn Stat. Ch. 10A
Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina
Contributor search tab-delimited file export capability does not work. No expenditures listed.
- Main Agency: North Dakota Secretary of State
- Authority: State candidates, state PACs
- Public Searches
- Search by committee name: YES
- Search by contributor name: YES
- Search by contributor address: NO
- Search by vendor name: NO
- Public Access
- Registration: HTML
- Report Summary: Scrapeable HTML
- Report Contributions: HTML, Tab-Delimited file
- Report Expenditures: None
- Public analysis tools
- No reporting tools are available, but there is a link to show contributions by ZIP code.
- Committee Filing
- Electronic committee registration, but in a very user unfriendly form-like manner
- Electronic filing via EDI/XML uploads
- Complaints:
- State Campaign Finance Law:
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming