About this corpus
This is a machine-readable copy of the Montana campaign finance record, built for an AI assistant to search and quote.
Where the data comes from
The Montana Commissioner of Political Practices operates the state's campaign finance filing system. Candidates, political committees, lobbyists, and their principals file into it. Those filings are public record.
This corpus is generated from that record. It is a copy, not the official source. Where an answer matters, the official record governs.
What is in it
- People — one document per person in the record, covering every candidacy.
- Organizations — committees, and the businesses and groups that appear in the money as donors or as paid vendors.
- Races — one document per office per election year, listing who ran.
- Counties — candidates by residence county, per cycle.
- Cycles — a summary of each election year.
- Guides — the five documents that explain how to read the record.
Every document is published as a web page and as markdown at the same path with
a .md suffix.
How to use it
Read How to read this data first. It carries the rules that keep an answer true, and most of them exist because breaking one produced a specific wrong answer about a real name.
What this corpus cannot answer lists the real gaps. The glossary defines the forms and schedules. How Montana elections are structured explains the offices and districts.
How current it is
The corpus rebuilds nightly from the filing data. Each page states the date the data runs through, and the date the page was generated. A page changes only when its underlying numbers change.
What it is not
It is not the official record. It reports no compliance determination. It ranks nobody, and it draws no connection between money and any election result or policy outcome. It states what was filed.