Services
Common Cause Pennsylvania built Our Philadelphia, a content rich website designed to both provide information to Philadelphians about the role of money in local politics and allow users to investigate these issues for themselves. In order to accurately match candidates and campaign contributions, Common Cause Pennsylvania built their lookup tool using Azavea’s Cicero API.
Visitors can enter their address and find their elected officials and learn where their top campaign contributions originated
Common Cause provides citizens of Philadelphia web-based district matching and elected official lookups in order to inform the public about campaign contributions to Pennsylvania candidates and elected officials
Client: Common Cause Pennsylvania
Challenge: Unlike many states, Pennsylvania has no limits on campaign contributions, and the online contribution databases maintained by the state and by the City of Philadelphia are missing much of the actual contribution data. As political fundraising heated up in advance of Pennsylvania’s 2010 May primary election, Common Cause Pennsylvania set out to make data about campaign contributions available to the public. Moreover, because many voters do not know who their elected officials are or how to contact them, Common Cause wanted to include an address-based district matching and elected official lookup tool to easily match elected officials and the campaign contributions they received.
Solution: Common Cause Pennsylvania built Our Philadelphia, a content rich website designed to both provide information to Philadelphians about the role of money in local politics and allow users to investigate these issues for themselves. In order to accurately match candidates and campaign contributions, Common Cause Pennsylvania built their lookup tool using Azavea’s Cicero API.
Visitors to the site are able to:
- Find their elected officials and learn where their top campaign contributions originated
- Learn more about election reform advocacy, including redistricting, campaign finance and ethics
- Read in-depth reports about the campaign contributions behind local issues that matter to Philadelphians
- Read blogs aggregating information, articles, events, and Philadelphia news relevant to how campaign contributions work in Philadelphia politics
Outcomes: “Our Philadelphia is a powerful new tool for people who want to hold their elected officials more accountable,” said James Browning, Director for Development for Common Cause Pennsylvania.
Made possible by the Samuel S. Fund, Our Philadelphia additionally focuses on redistricting reform for the city and the state, tracking the influence of lobbyists, and promoting higher ethical standards for public officials. Over time, Our Philadelphia plans to create its own searchable database of campaign contributions, and to add profiles of elected officials and their top donors from Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, and Chester counties.
Website: www.ourphiladelphia.org