California Secretary of State
The Political Reform Division publishes campaign and lobbying disclosures and explains the filing systems, coverage, and reporting responsibilities.
Sources
Check
the claim.
These public records are available for anyone to explore. Dark Money Map helps you find and understand their connections. The official systems below remain the sources to check.
Open source ↗
CAL-ACCESS raw data
Daily tab-delimited extracts of California campaign-finance and lobbying activity, with guides to the tables and fields. The Secretary of State notes that this information changes often.
California Power Search
A state-hosted search layer for electronically reported, state-level contributions and independent expenditures. Its own documentation warns that results depend on filer-supplied data.
California Legislative Information
The Legislature’s official publication system for bill text, status, history, votes, analyses, authors, and related legislative records.
Coverage is not completeness.
The current public graph focuses on California state records. Local campaign committees may file with local officers, federal activity belongs to separate systems, and not every political relationship is required to appear in a disclosure filing.
Source records can be amended, delayed, misspelled, or incomplete. Dark Money Map should make those limits visible and link a reader back to the record rather than presenting the visualization as primary evidence.
Read the method →Planned
A public API for California records
We are planning a public API for journalists, researchers and developers who want to work with California government records beyond the map.
The aim is to make public information easier to use in other tools, with access to sourced records and their connections, reporting dates and links to the original disclosures.
The API is not available yet. Join the waitlist and we will send documentation, access details and a launch date when they are ready.
Join the API waitlist →