Change Log
Platform release history — what changed and when.
v1.2.0 —
Changes to how FEC filings are counted. Member finance figures change as a result. Letter grades and voting records are unaffected.
- PAC money is read from each campaign’s own reports. PAC totals count contributions from PACs and other political committees, contributions from party committees, and each committee’s share of joint fundraising proceeds, less the refunds the campaign reports. Joint fundraising shares were not part of earlier PAC totals. Where FEC has no report for part of a cycle and the campaign’s cash balances cannot show nothing was received, the page shows no PAC figure for that cycle and says which period is missing. Effect on published PAC totals: 2,489 member-cycles across 444 members, net +$17,039,258.
- Amended filings are matched to the reports they amend. An amendment filed electronically replaces the whole original report, so lines the amendment omits are dropped. A paper amendment can be partial, so lines it leaves out are kept. This removed 138 rows / $209,230 across 59 member-cycles (54 members). The largest single change is 52 rows / $50,515.
- Outside spending now follows the filings. Totals use committees’ regular reports plus the 24-hour and 48-hour notices filed since each committee’s last regular report, and each line counts for the candidate the committee named in its own original filing. FEC’s processed data sometimes re-codes that identifier, so we read the filing itself. Before this change, 79% of 1,723 member-cycles were more than 5% away from FEC’s totals. One recovered case: the National Republican Congressional Committee’s September 2024 report, 184 lines totaling $14,093,660.56, was missing from FEC’s processed data after a paper amendment replaced it, and is counted again. Effect: 1,929 member-cycles, net +$402,891,013.
- Fundraising counts only a member’s own campaign committees, within the report period FEC has published. What a member raised is the sum of the committees FEC records as that member’s campaign committees for the cycle. Committees that FEC lists as a member’s campaign committee in some cycles and under another designation in others, such as a committee a member later turned into a political action committee, were counted in every cycle. They are now counted only in the cycles in which FEC’s record lists them as the member’s campaign committee, and the share a joint committee passes to a campaign is handled as described in the methodology. Individual contributions count only up to the end date of FEC’s own summary figures for that cycle. The correction removes $34,047,898 from individuals and $227,840 from organizations and tribes, across 42 members.
- Individual contributions. FEC’s bulk contribution file leaves out some lines that campaigns list on their own reports, including gifts from organizations and tribes and the cents on some amounts, and an earlier rule here dropped donors whose gifts in a year totaled under $200. Totals now include those lines from the campaigns’ own reports. Other receipts, refunds the campaign paid out and duplicate copies of a report are not counted. Effect: +$533,903,803 across 2,477 member-cycles.
v1.1.6 —
Money in Politics is now Money in Politics & Finance. The category keeps its campaign finance, lobbying, and ethics bills and now also covers how Congress regulates banks, Wall Street, crypto, and consumer financial protections. Six House votes are added under the wider scope. In the 119th Congress: the CLARITY Act (H.R.3633), the GENIUS Act (S.1582), and resolutions repealing the CFPB’s overdraft fee cap (S.J.Res.18) and the OCC’s bank merger review rule (S.J.Res.13). In the 118th Congress: FIT21 (H.R.4763) and a resolution to repeal the CFPB’s small-business lending data rule (S.J.Res.32). These votes change members’ grades in this category. The page address (/issues/finance/) is unchanged.
v1.1.5 —
Bundled PAC contributions are now reconciled between the two filings that report them. Federal law requires two committees to disclose an earmarked contribution: the PAC that bundles it and the campaign that receives it. We draw on both, and now match each committee’s own record of a contribution against the other’s, so it is counted once and the bundling committee is identified even where the campaign’s filing records only the payment platform that processed it. For the pro-Israel PAC category the bundled total rises from $73.1 million to $90.3 million across 418 members; other categories change by under $0.5 million combined. The site-wide PAC Total and the per-category breakdown come from the same reconciliation, so the two continue to agree. Bundled money shifts between the individual and PAC columns, so total funds raised is essentially unchanged while PAC totals and PAC share rise. Refunds of bundled contributions are now deducted, and a bundler’s forwarding entry is no longer counted alongside the contribution it forwards. All figures come from FEC filings as of our weekly refresh. Letter grades and voting records are unaffected.
v1.1.4 —
Corrections to how FEC filings are counted. Member finance figures change as a result. For most members the change is under half a percent; for nine it is 5% or more, for the reason given in the last item. Letter grades and voting records are unaffected.
- Amended filings are matched within a single report. The de-duplication described in v1.0.2 compared transaction IDs across a whole election cycle. An FEC transaction ID is unique only within a single report, and a committee’s other reports can reuse it, so contributions from filers whose numbering restarts each report were treated as duplicates and removed. Matching now applies only to later versions of the same report, and requires the two filings to agree on amount and date across at least half the transactions they share. Most members’ totals rise.
- Refunds are subtracted in the cycle they are filed. When a campaign returned a contribution in a later cycle than the one it arrived in, the refund was discarded, so the money stayed in the member’s total. PAC totals now reflect returned contributions. The effect is largest for members who return a high share of the PAC contributions they receive.
- A committee’s type and designation are read as of the cycle. The corporate / trade / labor breakdown, and the exclusion of joint fundraising committees from PAC totals, both took a committee’s most recent FEC record and applied it to every cycle of its giving, so money given in 2012 was counted under the classification that committee holds today. Both now use the record for the cycle the money was given in.
- Contributions from organizations and tribes are counted, and shown separately. The FEC records these on the same Form 3 line as individual contributions, line 11(a)(i), which federal law defines to cover persons other than political committees, including organizations. Our pipeline filtered them out of every total, so about $28 million across 435 members appeared nowhere. They are now included, and shown as their own source alongside individual and PAC money. Most of this money is tribal contributions, so the correction raises the reported fundraising of members representing districts with tribal populations more than it raises anyone else’s. Grassroots percentage, average donation, and the donation-size breakdown continue to count individual donors only.
v1.1.3 —
Individual contributions now include earmarked receipts that a campaign reported under the intermediary’s transaction codes (24T/24I). The FEC records these on Form 3 line 11AI alongside standard earmarked contributions (15E); they were previously excluded from both earmarked and individual totals. Affects about $228,000 across the 2012–2022 cycles; no change to 2024 or 2026.
v1.1.2 —
PAC totals refined to exclude two more payment processors. Extending the conduit exclusion introduced in v1.0.8, earmarked contributions routed through Democracy Engine and VoteSane — payment platforms that pass individual donations through to campaigns, like ActBlue and WinRed — are now counted as individual money (their FEC designation) rather than PAC money. Separately, contributions recorded in FEC filings under a mistyped or unresolvable committee ID are no longer shown as PAC donors, since they can’t be tied to a real committee. As a result, some members’ PAC Total and PAC share are modestly lower — a few shift by 2–3 points — while total funds raised is essentially unchanged. All figures come from FEC filings as of our weekly refresh. Letter grades and voting records are unaffected.
v1.1.1 —
Outside-spending indicator now reflects a member’s full tenure. The “Outside spending” figure in the District Record — shown on the scorecard, on bill pages, and in the district map — previously reported only the most recent completed election cycle for the district. It now reports independent expenditures for or against the member cumulatively across their tenure, scoped to the member rather than to the whole district race. This is the same figure already shown on the member’s “Money & Influence” money map, so the two now agree. Because it is a lifetime total that varies with how long each member has served, it is shown as a plain figure with no national-average comparison. Letter grades and voting records are unaffected.
v1.1.0 —
Campaign finance, reimagined. The money map — an interactive dashboard showing where a House member’s money comes from and how it flows — is now built into every member profile and powers a rebuilt Campaign Finance tool with three switchable views.
- Money map on member profiles. Each member’s “Money & Influence” tab now shows a full interactive money map in place of the former static cards: a Sankey flow diagram tracing money from source through type, a proportional treemap showing composition at a glance, a raised-by-cycle trend chart, a PAC-by-interest-category bar chart with a hover list of the actual PAC donors in each category, and an outside-spending block breaking down independent expenditures by interest category and individual spender. A cycle filter and KPI summary strip (Raised, % PAC, % Corporate, % Grassroots) sit above the dashboard, and a per-PAC CSV export is available throughout.
- Campaign Finance tool — three views. The tool has been rebuilt around the same shared money map. A view toggle at the top switches between Charts (the full money map for the current scope), Rankings (a sortable table of every member in scope with per-member Raised, % PAC, % Corporate, % Grassroots, Outside $, and category-dollar columns), and Map (a US House district choropleth coloring districts by the finance metric of your choice). The Zone-A overview — top-line KPIs and the highest-PAC / most-grassroots members — stays pinned above all three views. Scope (All House / party / state / member) and cycle filters narrow all three views simultaneously.
- Rankings table. Click any column header to sort; click a row to open that member’s money map in Charts view. A “Category $” column lets you pick any of the 19 tracked interest categories and rank members by their PAC donations in that category. Outside spending is always all-time regardless of the cycle filter.
- Finance choropleth. The Map view renders all 435 House districts as an SVG choropleth. Districts outside the current scope are dimmed; click any in-scope district to open that member’s money map in Charts view. Color is quantile-binned across all members so the scale is stable as you change scope.
Letter grades, voting records, and the underlying FEC data pipeline are unchanged.
v1.0.8 —
PAC money, broken down and made complete. Member profiles and the Campaign Finance tool now show where a member’s PAC money comes from in much more detail, and the headline “PAC Total” now reflects all PAC contributions rather than only the tracked interest-group categories.
- Complete PAC totals. The “PAC Total” figure now counts every PAC contribution to the member — direct contributions plus individual donations earmarked through PACs, across all committees — not just the curated interest-group categories. Conduit pass-throughs (ActBlue and WinRed, which are individual money), joint fundraising committees, and the member’s own committees are excluded, matching FEC’s definition of contributions from other committees. Many members’ PAC totals are higher as a result.
- Funding by category, with the remainder shown. The PAC-funding breakdown now includes an “Other (non-categorized)” bar capturing all PAC money from committees outside the tracked interest groups, so the categories sum to the full total.
- Funding by PAC type. A new breakdown shows what kind of committee the money comes from — corporate, trade association, labor, membership, cooperative, or non-connected (leadership, ideological, and single-candidate / super PACs) — with a “% corporate” highlight.
- Outside spending, itemized. Independent expenditures (outside money spent for or against a member) are broken down by interest category and by the individual committees doing the spending, on member profiles and in the tool.
- CSV export. The Campaign Finance tool now exports a per-member and chamber-wide CSV of PAC contributions and outside spending, including each committee’s FEC ID and organization type, with the FEC filing date in the filename.
All figures are drawn directly from FEC filings and reconciled against FEC’s own reported totals. Campaign-finance data is self-reported and amended over time, so figures reflect the latest filings as of our weekly FEC refresh. Letter grades and voting records are unaffected.
v1.0.7 —
Outside-spending figures refined. We’ve refined how independent expenditures (outside spending for or against a candidate) are calculated. Totals are now drawn directly from FEC Schedule E with amended filings de-duplicated — keeping only the most recent version of each filing — counted across all outside groups, and reported per member consistently on both member profiles and the Campaign Finance tool. Some member profiles will show different outside-spending totals as a result. Separately, corporate-financing (employer) totals now count only itemized individual contributions — excluding candidate self-funding, refund disbursements, and earmark memo entries that were previously double-counted — so some members’ employer totals are modestly lower. Letter grades and voting records are unaffected.
v1.0.6 —
Press releases now on member profiles. Each member profile carries a new “Press releases” tab listing recent items from the member’s official *.house.gov newsroom. Coverage spans all 427 current House members; for the 63 offices whose most recent release is more than 90 days old, the date of that most recent release is shown alongside the tab. The cache refreshes weekly on Mondays.
v1.0.5 —
Travel display refined. Where a privately funded travel filing has been amended, the site uses the amended version of the filing across member profiles, the Travel tool, and the activity feed.
v1.0.4 —
Activity feed added across the site. Each member profile’s former “Record” tab is now an “Activity” tab: a single chronological stream of every action we track for that member — votes, cosponsorships, congressional letters, floor speeches, privately funded travel, and stock-trade disclosures — filterable by Congress, event type, issue area, and outcome, with full-text search. Issue-area pages now carry a Recent Activity section listing the latest tracked legislation for that issue, and the hub home page shows a Recent Activity feed covering the last 30 days. Letter grades, voting records, and the underlying data are unchanged; this release reorganizes how that record is displayed.
v1.0.3 —
Climate methodology expanded. Climate scoring now credits cosponsorship of climate legislation and signatures on environmental-policy letters, in addition to the existing scoring of opposition votes on environmental-rollback bills. The methodology label changed from “informed by LCV” to “partially informed by LCV.” Eleven new items were added under the expanded framework.
v1.0.2 —
FEC data-handling refinements. We’ve improved how our FEC pipeline reconciles amended filings and aligns aggregations with Form 3 reporting categories. FEC bulk files retain both original and amended versions of each transaction; we now keep only the most recent filing per transaction. Donor profile totals now also match FEC’s own definition of itemized individual contributions (Form 3 line 11(a)(i)), including only direct and earmarked giving while excluding refund disbursements and special-account contributions. Member donor profile pages will show modestly lower individual contribution totals as a result. Letter grades, voting records, and under-$200 grassroots percentages are unaffected.
v1.0.1 —
FEC lifetime totals now aggregate across multiple candidate filings. Previously, finance totals for House members pulled from a single FEC candidate record. Members with multiple filings during their current tenure — renumbering, new committee, primary loss then return — were showing partial or empty totals. We now aggregate across every FEC candidate ID active during a member’s current continuous House service. Prior non-contiguous House service (e.g., a member who served a different seat decades ago) is excluded so totals reflect the seat they hold now.
Nine members had meaningful corrections, most visibly Cleo Fields (LA-6), Don Davis (NC-1), Andy Ogles (TN-5), Raul Ruiz (CA-25), Rick Allen (GA-12), Troy Carter (LA-2), Tom Kean Jr. (NJ-7), Ralph Norman (SC-5), and Gilbert Cisneros (CA-31).
v1.0 —
Initial launch.