How to read Montana campaign finance data

This document states what the record does and does not support. Read it before answering any question about a named person or organization. Each rule below exists because breaking it produced a specific wrong answer about a real name.

The record covers Montana state and local elections only

CERS is the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices filing system. It holds Montana state, county, municipal, school, and judicial races. It does not hold federal races. A question about a US Senate or US House campaign has no answer here. Say so, rather than offering a state race with a similar name.

A candidate's county is where the candidate LIVES

The county on a candidate record is the residence county. It is not the jurisdiction of the race.

The record contains no mapping from a legislative district to the counties it covers. So there are two different questions, and only the first has an answer:

  1. Who is running who lives in Flathead County? Answerable.
  2. Which races cover Flathead County? Not answerable from this record.

A legislative district is not a county and does not sit inside one. Never present the first answer as though it were the second.

The record does not say who won

CERS records candidacies and money. It does not record election results. The fields that would hold an outcome are empty for practically every candidate.

Never infer a winner. Money raised does not decide an election, and saying or implying otherwise is both wrong and unfair to a named person. If asked who won, say the record does not contain results and name the source that does.

Receiving money is not the same as being given money

A campaign's receipts include interest, refunds, rebates, returned deposits, proceeds from selling equipment, and transfers between a filer's own accounts. Only some receipts are contributions.

Reading every receipt as a donation once produced a list showing a bank donating to candidates. The bank had paid interest on a campaign account.

The corpus reports contributions and other receipts as separate figures. Use the contribution figure when asked who gave money. Never add them together.

What a person gave is net of refunds

A campaign that receives more than the law allows from one contributor refunds the excess, often weeks later. The refund is a separate payment on the campaign's expenditure schedule. The filing does not link it to the contribution it returns.

So the contribution lines alone overstate what a person gave. One contributor appeared at $3,200 when the campaign had refunded $2,370 of it: he gave $830.

In this corpus, every figure for what a contributor gave is net of refunds. Where a refund applies, the table shows three things: what was given net of refunds, the amount refunded, and the count of contributions. Quote the net figure as what the person gave. Mention the refund when you give the figure, so the answer still reconciles with the filing, which shows the gross.

Three limits apply:

  1. A refund is subtracted only from someone who gave to that same campaign. A payment labeled a refund to someone who never contributed there (a vendor overpayment, a returned deposit) reduces nobody.
  2. A net figure is never below zero.
  3. A refund is matched to a contributor by identity, not by a link in the record. A refund recorded under a different spelling of the name stays unmatched, and that contributor's figure stays gross.

A campaign's total "contributions received" is the gross figure as filed. Where the campaign refunded contributors, the refunds appear on their own line under it. The itemized contribution lines are also as filed.

A debt is not an expense

Montana filers report debts and unpaid loans on their own schedule, separate from expenditures. A candidate who lends money to their own campaign has created a debt, not spent money. Do not add debt to spending.

One name can play several roles, and the roles never add up

The same name can be a candidate, a donor, a vendor paid for services, and the principal behind a lobbyist. These are different relationships to the money.

Report each role on its own line. Never sum them into one figure for total activity. A consulting firm paid by forty campaigns is not a large donor. It is a large vendor. Adding those together states something untrue.

Totals are floors, never exact

The same real person or business appears in the record many times over, under spelling variants, old addresses, and separate filings. Curation work merges these into single profiles, and that work is not finished.

So a total for a donor means "at least this much". Say it that way. A total that is presented as exact will be wrong the day the next merge lands.

Money in and money out are recorded by the filer, not by the counterparty

The campaign that files the report decides whether a transaction is money in or money out. The other name on the transaction is the source when the money came in, and the payee when the money went out. Reading the counterparty field alone, without the direction, mislabels both.

Self-funding is not capped for candidates

A Montana candidate may put unlimited personal money into their own campaign. Contribution limits apply to money from other people. Political committees have no equivalent exemption. Do not describe a large self-contribution as exceeding a limit.

Some values in the record are defects

What to do when the record cannot answer

Say what is missing and stop. Do not estimate, do not substitute a similar name, and do not fill a gap with general knowledge about Montana politics. A user of this record needs to know the difference between a fact on file and a guess.

Neutrality

Report who gave what to whom, and when. Do not rank donors by influence, do not describe a contribution as buying access or a vote, and do not connect money to an election result or a policy outcome. State the record. The reader draws the conclusion.