We currently scan all paper reports received at the Federal Election Commission. This includes reports filed by Campaigns for the House of Representatives and for President, along with reports by political party committees and political action committees who participate in Federal elections. Scanned images of reports filed with the Secretary of the Senate after May 15, 2000 are included here as well.
Financial reports contain all receipts and disbursements committees are required to disclose under the Federal Election Campaign Act. This includes contributions from individual people if the amount received from an individual totals more than $200 during a year; contributions from party committees, PACs, and candidates regardless of amount; loans received by committees and other kinds of receipts. Campaign and party committees, as well as PACs with no corporate, labor or membership sponsor must report their regular operating expenses, and all committees report contributions they give to other federal committees and any independent expenditures or other activities related to federal campaigns.
Notice: The reports listed above are available for public inspection and copying at the FEC. "Any information copied from such reports or statements may not be sold or used by any person for the purpose of soliciting contributions or for commercial purposes, other than using the name and address of any political committee to solicit contributions from such committee." 2 U.S.C. 438(a)(4). You should also see the FEC's Brochure on restrictions on the sale and use of this information
You will also see miscellaneous correspondence between the FEC and committees in cases where there are questions about information included in reports or where committees want to clarify what they have reported.
The system now includes all reports scanned by the Commission covering 1993 through the present. Current reports are added to the system daily, as they are received and scanned here at the FEC. You can review the Reporting Schedule to see when committees are required to submit these reports.
Remember, however, that scanning of House campaign reports began in May of 1996 and Senate campaign reports May 15, 2000. This means that reports received before these dates are not available on the system. If you attempt to retrieve any of these reports, the system will respond that the "Image is not found".
Commission scanning actually began in 1993. Initially, we scanned reports filed by political action committees and party committees and campaign committees for Presidential candidates. We expanded our scanning in May of 1996 to include campaigns for the House of Representatives.
You can begin your search for campaign and committee reports in a variety of different ways.
You can search for committees by using words from their name - e.g., a House candidate's last name or a prominent word in a PAC name. PACs that are sponsored by corporations, labor organizations or other membership groups include the name of the company or group in the PAC name.
You could also use the Advanced Search to find committees
If you know the FEC ID number of the committee you're looking for, you can use that number (believe it or not, some people actually know these).
You can also search for committees by state, by political party or by the name of a committee treasurer, or the address of the committee.
You can search for a specific page by entering its image number (e.g. 98033001250). These numbers are found in FEC data files listing specific contributions or disbursements, and also on indexes available from the Commission's Public Records and Press Office.
You can also use combinations of these elements, e.g. House campaign committees in Alabama, or PACs with addresses in California, etc.
Once you have a list of committees, click on the specific committee you are interested in viewing. A list will appear showing the reports filed by that committee. Each report covers a specific time period.
Click on any report to see the first page of that document.
Then move through the report by clicking the "next page" or "previous page" buttons which appear at the top and bottom of each page.
To view and print individual pages choose Display Image - to print the page you are viewing you should select the frame with the image (click on the page) and then choose Print Frame from the browser File menu. To print full reports select the PDF version of the filing - the program will transmit the complete report to you for viewing or printing using Adobe Acrobat Reader.
