How the Register is built.
Every figure on the Register traces to a filing. This page describes how filings become records.
Collection
State candidate and committee accounts are collected from the Florida Division of Elections and federal candidate committees from the Federal Election Commission. Every line on every account is loaded, not a sample. The ledger is refreshed weekly and the date of the last refresh is shown on the front page and on every record.
Entity resolution
Contributors, payees, candidates, and committees are resolved to canonical entities using registered names, addresses, occupation and employer fields, committee numbers, and the Division of Corporations registry. Name variants are retained as aliases. Where resolution is uncertain, records are flagged and left unlinked rather than guessed.
Joins
Individual donors are matched to the statewide voter file, county parcel rolls, and the business registry. Candidates, chairs, treasurers, and paid staff are matched to contact details drawn from filings and public registries. Match counts are published on the front page and are updated with each refresh.
Classification
Expenditures are assigned to one of nine vendor classes based on the payee's canonical entity and the purpose as filed. Committee-to-committee transfers are separated from vendor payments so that the largest line on an account is not mistaken for a vendor.
Citation
Every line carries the identifier of the filing it came from and the date it was loaded. Exports include these references so downstream analysis can be checked against the original report.
Corrections
If a record appears to be wrong, write to corrections@limestoneregister.com with the account number and the line. Corrections are logged and reflected in the next weekly refresh.