Terms of use

What this site is

The site is independent journalism and commentary about money in US federal elections. It is not affiliated with the Federal Election Commission, any candidate, party, committee or campaign, and it does not endorse or oppose anyone. Nothing here is legal, financial or voting advice.

Where the data comes from and how far to trust it

Figures come from public FEC filings and bulk data, and election results come from official results and published race calls. We process that data with the methods described on the About the data page. Filings get amended, reports arrive late, names are matched automatically and results change while votes are counted, so numbers on this site can be incomplete, out of date or wrong. Check the original FEC record before relying on a figure, and tell us if you find a mistake (see Corrections).

The site is provided “as is”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness or fitness for a particular purpose.

What “bought”, “buyers” and “winners” mean here

Every contribution and expenditure shown is a legal transaction that was publicly reported to the FEC. Words like “bought”, “buyers”, “wasted” and “winners” are our shorthand for who paid and whether the candidates their money supported won. They are opinion and commentary based on the disclosed figures. They do not state or imply that any person or organisation broke a law, traded money for a vote or official act, or acted corruptly, and no such claim is made about anyone named on this site.

Reusing contributor names: a federal rule

Federal law (52 U.S.C. 30111(a)(4)) says information about individual contributors copied from FEC reports may not be sold or used to solicit contributions or for any commercial purpose, other than using the name and address of a political committee to solicit contributions from that committee. That rule applies to you if you take donor names from this site. Do not use them to fundraise, market, build mailing or contact lists, or sell them, and do not scrape the site to do any of those things.

Using our work

The underlying FEC records are public. Our text, charts, scoring and page design are our own work. You are welcome to quote, link to and share pages and share images for news, research, commentary and non-commercial purposes, with a credit and link to followthemoney.ai. Please do not republish the site wholesale or present our analysis as your own.

Acceptable use

• Do not try to disrupt, overload or gain unauthorised access to the site.
• Automated access is fine at a polite rate and within robots.txt; heavy scraping is not.
• Do not use the site to harass, threaten or dox anyone named on it.

Links to other sites

We link to the FEC, Wikipedia and other sources. We are not responsible for their content or availability.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, the operators of this site are not liable for any loss or damage arising from your use of the site or reliance on its content.

Changes

We may update these terms. The date at the top shows the latest version, and continuing to use the site means you accept it.

Contact

Questions about these terms: corrections@followthemoney.ai.