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The code SP marks a special election, and the numeral distinguishes one special from another within the same year; CL identifies the file as a candidate list. So a file at this address is a roster of people who registered as federal candidates for a special election held during 2012. Specials are the least understood ... Read more

CENR marks certified results and PRI marks a primary, so a file at this address concerns the nomination contests of the 2016 cycle rather than the November election. Primary results are certified the same way general election results are, but the process is stretched across a much longer calendar and governed by a much wider ... Read more

This page explains what a primary candidate list is for the 2020 cycle: a compilation of people who had registered as federal candidates for House and Senate seats ahead of that year's nominating contests. It is a filings document, and reading it as a list of likely nominees produces a badly wrong picture of the ... Read more

A general election candidate list is a roster of the people who were running for federal office in November of a given cycle — here, 2020. It is a register drawn from filings, and the most useful thing to understand about it is the difference between being registered as a federal candidate and appearing on ... Read more

An advisory opinion is a short legal document with a fixed anatomy, and once you know the anatomy it reads quickly. This reference page walks through the structure and explains what each part does, so that a file addressed in this style, a year and a sequence number, can be approached with the right expectations. ... Read more

A presidential primary candidate list is a roster of people who had registered as candidates for president with federal campaign finance authorities during the 2020 cycle. It is one of the most misread documents in American election data, because it is far longer than any ballot and includes many names that no voter ever saw. ... Read more

A committee record is the hinge of the whole campaign finance disclosure system. Candidates come and go, elections pass, but money in federal politics moves through registered committees, and every dollar disclosed is attached to one. This reference page explains what a political committee is, what its record contains, and how the identifiers work. Actual ... Read more

Addresses under an advisory opinion path pointed at a distinct kind of legal document, one that sits between a regulation and an enforcement action and is often misunderstood as either. This reference page explains the genre: who asks for an advisory opinion, what the answer binds, and how the numbering used in file names of ... Read more

CENR in a filename stands for certified election results. This page explains what certification means for a primary compilation covering the 2018 cycle, and why a certified document differs from what was reported when the votes were counted. Certification is a legal act Counting ballots and certifying results are separate steps performed by different bodies. ... Read more

There are two very different documents people mean when they say "the list of candidates": the roster of names printed on a ballot, and the register of campaigns that filed with the federal regulator. This page is about the second kind. It explains what a general election candidate list from the 2018 cycle records, how ... Read more