Tracking Local Campaign Finance
Each year, political campaigns break records for money raised and spent. Where does all that money come from? Who’s giving it? What are their interests in supporting any given candidate? Researching these questions has become a key part of national political coverage, and between the Federal Election Commission and various public interest organizations, basic access to campaign finance data is well understood. Things are much different for state and local elections. Reporting regulations vary considerably from state to state, and local news organizations are often short of the resources required to deal with the complexity of even gathering contribution data, let alone analyzing it.
For this Knight Lab Studio project, students will work with Knight Lab Professional Fellow AmyJo Brown, who is building a system called Public Ledger to organize campaign finance data in Pennsylvania. Students will learn from AmyJo about how she is building Public Ledger, and research the issues involved in expanding it to a limited number of additional states, including Illinois.
By working on this project, students will get direct experience with both the journalistic and data-handling issues involved in covering money in local politics. They will learn about what it takes to provide a data service that helps journalists work with this data that they would not otherwise be able to get.