Know what you're voting on and who's paying for it.
Plain-English, non-partisan explainers built from official government filings. We show you the money and the mechanics; the judgment is yours. How we do this →
Congressional vs. state & local, what's the difference?
Congressional candidates run for the U.S. House and Senate, where federal law gets written. State & local covers everything closer to home: your state legislature (the AB and SB bills you'll find here), statewide ballot measures, and offices like county supervisor, mayor, city council, and school board. They file their money in different systems, federal candidates with the FEC, state and local ones with state and county agencies, which is why most sites only show you one layer. We join all of them.
Who's running for Congress in every state, plus California state & local races. What they raised, how much of it is grassroots vs. PAC money, their top donors, and their platform in their own words.
Browse candidates →
What it would actually change if it passes, in plain English, plus who's funding each side of a ballot measure and which organizations are paying to lobby a bill.
Browse bills & measures →Why we built this
Finding real information about a candidate, a bill, or a ballot measure is harder than it should be. The facts are scattered across government databases that were never designed for regular people to read. We built this guide to put them in one place, in plain English: who's running, what's on the ballot, what a bill would actually change, and who's funding all of it.
Why we show the money
Campaign finance and lobbying records are the most concrete public record of who has a stake in an outcome. Speeches are written for audiences; checks are written with intent. Knowing that a candidate's money comes mostly from small individual gifts, or mostly from organizations with business before the government, doesn't tell you how to vote. It tells you who is invested in the result, and it gives you a way to check the message against the money. Sometimes they line up. Sometimes they don't. Either way, you deserve to see it.
We don't endorse candidates or measures, we don't rate or rank anyone, and nothing here is a recommendation. Every number comes from official government filings, cited on each page, and is shown for informational purposes only. What you do with it is up to you.