Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Follow the Money: How Campaign Finance Disclosure Can Help Us Be Better Citizens

By Christopher Cooper

Four times a year, people running for office file paperwork detailing how much campaign money they took in, where it came from, and how they spent it. You don’t need to file a FOIA request and you don’t need any special access or a secret decoder ring to get the information--simply the ability to navigate a web browser here and here and commence to sleuthing. I wish we had better disclosure laws and the data aren’t perfect, but what is available can help you better understand who's running for office, who they depend on, and what their spending says about them.