Glossary of Montana campaign finance terms

Montana filing vocabulary, as used throughout this corpus.

Who files

Candidate — a person who has filed to run for a Montana state or local office. One person can be a candidate several times, for different offices, in different years. Each of those is a separate candidacy.

Political committee — an organization that raises or spends money to support or oppose candidates or ballot issues. Montana recognizes several kinds, including political action committees, ballot issue committees, independent committees, and incidental committees.

Incidental committee — an organization whose main purpose is something other than elections, but which spends money on them. It files a different report from a full political committee, so it is not missing a filing it never owed.

Treasurer — the person legally responsible for a campaign's or committee's records and reports. Every campaign must appoint one.

Lobbyist — a person paid to influence Montana legislation or official action. Lobbyists register and report separately from campaigns.

Principal — the person or organization that pays a lobbyist. The principal files its own reports on what it spent.

The forms

Montana form names begin with a letter for the family and a number for the form.

C-1, C-3, D-1 — registration forms. They say who is running, who the treasurer is, and where the campaign banks. They carry no money figures.

C-5 — a candidate's finance report.

C-6 — a political committee's finance report.

C-4 — an incidental committee's finance report. A committee that files C-4 does not file C-6.

C-7, C-8 — additional periodic finance reports.

L-1 — a lobbyist licence.

L-5 — a lobbyist or principal spending report.

Note that L-1 through L-5 are lobbying FORM names. If you see "L1" through "L5" used to mean a severity or escalation level, that is a different system and not part of this record.

The schedules

A finance report is divided into schedules. Each schedule holds one kind of line.

Schedule A — receipts. Every dollar that came in. This includes contributions, and also interest, refunds, rebates, sale proceeds, and transfers between a filer's own accounts. Schedule A is not a list of donations. See How to read this data.

Schedule B — expenditures. Every dollar that went out, and who was paid.

Schedule C — debts and loans not yet paid. Money owed, not money spent. A candidate's loan to their own campaign appears here.

Schedule D — additional detail lines.

Money terms

Contribution — money or value given to support a campaign. A subset of receipts.

Other receipt — a receipt that is not a contribution. Reported separately so that a name appearing only as a refund is not described as a donor.

In-kind contribution — goods or services given instead of money.

Earmarked contribution — money routed through one recipient toward another. The record holds these as free text, without a structured link to the intended beneficiary, so they cannot be traced automatically.

Beginning balance — money already on hand at the start of a reporting period. It is not a contribution and is not new money.

Transfer — money moved between accounts belonging to the same filer. Not a contribution, and counting it as one inflates a total.

Primary and general splits — Montana treats the primary and the general election as separate contests with separate limits. The same donor may give to both. Two contributions from one donor in one cycle are normal and are not duplicates.

Election terms

Election year — the calendar year of the election, as recorded on the candidacy. Montana holds state and county elections in even years and many municipal and school elections in odd years.

Reporting period — the date window a single report covers.

House District No. NN — one of 100 Montana House seats.

Senate District No. NN — one of 50 Montana Senate seats. Roughly half are elected in any given cycle, so a cycle with no candidate in a district may be correct rather than incomplete.

Judicial district — the jurisdiction of a District Court judge. It is numbered, and it is not the same as a legislative district and not the same as a county.

Justice of the Peace — a county office. The same title appears in many counties at once, so the county is part of the race's identity.