Module 8 of 9
History — why all this exists
Federal disclosure of campaign finance dates to the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971 and its 1974 amendments, which established the FEC. The McCain-Feingold Act (BCRA, 2002) added "soft money" restrictions on party committees.Citizens United v. FEC (2010) struck down corporate independent-expenditure limits, enabling super PACs. SpeechNow.org v. FEC (2010, D.C. Cir.) extended that to individuals giving to independent-expenditure-only committees. The contribution limit framework on candidate committees survived all of this — the dollar caps in the table above are the post-2010 rules.
How pac.dog uses all this
Every page on the site corresponds to one of the concepts above: a candidate, a committee, a bill, a member, an election, a vote. Internally, every row of every table reduces to one of ten primitive shapes (entity, identity, account, ledger entry, …) so the same engine handles a candidate's donor history, a bill's action timeline, and a live "how much can I still legally give" check without forking the code path. Start clicking from /candidates or /committees.
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