# Responsible America — Political Money Tracking Methodology

Status: architecture document plus a first real, hand-verified seed
dataset (added 2026-08-11). Companion to
`docs/public-scorecard-methodology.md` (same "architecture before data"
approach) and `docs/fact-checking-policy.md`.

Last reviewed: 2026-08-11.

## 1. What this is, and what it is not

This is the data architecture for tracking money in federal politics —
built around the Federal Election Commission's own legal taxonomy, not a
new one invented for this platform. `political-money-tracking.html`
presents the eight legally distinct entity/spending categories and the
statutory regime each falls under, sourced directly to FEC guidance, CRS
reports, and controlling case law already in this platform's evidence
system.

**It is still not a live tracker.** This static site has no FEC bulk-data
ingestion pipeline, no server, and no scheduled data refresh. As of
2026-08-11 it does display real dollar figures for nine specific, named
entities (§2 below) — but every one of those figures is a manually
researched, individually sourced, one-time snapshot, labeled with its own
"last verified" date. Nothing on this page updates itself, and this page
must never be read as reflecting current, today's-date totals for any
entity. See §5 for what a genuinely live version would require.

## 2. The seed dataset: nine named entities

Added 2026-08-11 as this tool's first conversion from architecture-only to
real, source-backed content. Selection criteria, full research notes, and
the specific methodological lessons this dataset was built to teach are in
`research/tool-political-money-seed/research-plan.md`. In short:

- **Symmetric by construction.** One national party committee per major
  party (DNC, RNC); both 2024 major-party presidential nominees' principal
  campaign committees; one Senate-aligned Super PAC per party (Senate
  Majority PAC, Senate Leadership Fund) and each one's affiliated
  501(c)(4) (Majority Forward, One Nation); one non-partisan connected PAC
  (AT&T Inc. Employee Federal PAC) included specifically as a
  non-ideological reference point.
- **Every entity record (`data/political-money/*.json`) carries a
  `fact_vs_inference` sentence.** The fact asserted is always narrow: a
  specific filing (or, for a 501(c)(4), a specific report about that
  organization) states a specific figure as of a specific date. This
  platform does not infer corruption, coordination, influence, or a quid
  pro quo from any figure in this dataset, and says so on every record.
- **`disclosure_limitation_note` is populated wherever it's genuinely
  true.** Majority Forward and One Nation are 501(c)(4) nonprofits, not
  FEC-registered committees — they have no FEC committee ID and are not
  required to disclose their own donors, even though the Super PAC each is
  affiliated with does disclose its own donors. That gap is stated
  directly on both records, not left implicit.
- **Where sources genuinely disagreed, the disagreement is documented
  rather than silently resolved.** Both 2024 presidential campaign
  committees' totals were cross-checked against a second, independent
  secondary source; each record's `financial_data.figure_notes` and the
  underlying source's `credibility_notes_internal` explain what was found
  and why the published figure was chosen. A committee-ID mismatch caught
  mid-research (an early search for "Senate Majority PAC" returned an
  unrelated, similarly-named committee) is documented the same way.
- **Every dollar figure was verified via WebSearch synthesis of a named
  publisher's own page (FEC.gov, OpenSecrets, or CREW), not WebFetch, this
  pass** — each affected source's `credibility_notes_internal` says so and
  recommends a direct page read before treating any figure as final.

**Verified seed dataset — last verified 2026-08-11.** This is a
demonstration dataset (nine entities), not a comprehensive one. It does
not cover every committee even within the categories it touches, and it
is not refreshed on any schedule.

## 3. The eight categories, and why they are legally distinct

The task naming this tool explicitly requires keeping these separate,
because they are — under real, different statutory and regulatory regimes,
not by this platform's own choice:

| Category | Statutory basis | Key distinguishing fact |
|---|---|---|
| Candidate committee | FECA | Subject to per-election contribution limits; can coordinate freely with its own candidate (it *is* the candidate's committee). |
| Party committee — national | FECA | Not affiliated with state/local committees for contribution-limit purposes. |
| Party committee — state/district/local | FECA | Presumed affiliated with (sharing limits with) the state committee unless independence is demonstrated. |
| PAC — connected (SSF) | FECA | Sponsored by a corporation, union, or trade association; can only solicit a restricted class of contributors. |
| PAC — nonconnected | FECA | Not sponsored by another organization; ordinary FECA contribution limits apply. |
| Super PAC (independent-expenditure-only committee) | FECA as construed by *SpeechNow.org v. FEC*, 599 F.3d 686 (D.C. Cir. 2010), following *Citizens United v. FEC* | May accept **unlimited** contributions, including from corporations and unions — because it makes only independent expenditures, never contributions to candidates. |
| Outside spending / dark-money entity | Often IRC §501(c)(4) or similar, not FECA | A different statutory regime entirely (tax law, not election law) — this is precisely why "dark money" is possible: a 501(c)(4) has different disclosure obligations than an FEC-registered committee. |
| Lobbying registrant | Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, as amended | A wholly separate statutory regime from all of the above — lobbying discloses influence activity, not campaign contributions, and should never be aggregated with campaign-finance totals as if they were the same kind of spending. |

## 4. What "do not imply relationships the evidence does not establish" means here

This platform will not connect a specific reform's `supporting_organizations`
or `opposing_organizations` field to a specific real-world spending pattern
without a direct, sourced citation for that specific connection. The
taxonomy above describes *how the law separates these entities* — it does
not, by itself, say anything about which entities support or oppose any
specific reform on this platform. Any future claim of that kind must be
built the same way every other claim on this platform is: sourced,
verification-status-labeled, and never asserted from inference alone.

## 5. What would need to be true before this becomes a live tracker

A real FEC bulk-data ingestion pipeline (most plausibly via the FEC's own
public API or bulk data downloads), a defined refresh cadence, and a
decision about which specific committees/cycles to track on an ongoing
basis. `data/schemas/political-money-entity.schema.json`'s `financial_data`
field already holds real per-committee figures for the nine seed entities
in §2, each with its own `source_id` and `as_of_date` — the same
evidentiary standard every reform's own fiscal estimates already carry.
What is still missing is scale (nine entities, not the full universe of
FEC-registered committees) and a refresh mechanism (a one-time hand-verified
snapshot, not a pipeline) — both are the gap between this seed dataset and
an actual live tracker.