Data sources
Where our information comes from
Civilian is not a government app. Civilian is published by Civilian LLC. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any government agency, and it does not provide or facilitate any government service. Everything below is public record, republished with attribution.
Federal government
- Federal bills and laws
- U.S. Senate roll-call votes
- U.S. House roll-call votes
- Federal campaign contributions and committee filings
- Congressional districts, demographics, address geocoding
- Prices, wages and employment figures
- Corporate filings
- School district names, boundaries and enrolment
- Nonprofit grant filings (Form 990, Schedule I)
State campaign finance
Contribution records come directly from the official disclosure authority in each of these states. States not listed here are not sources — we do not hold their filings.
- California
- Colorado
- Florida
- Georgia
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Texas
- Virginia
- Washington
Local government
- City council agendas, minutes and local ordinances
- City and county meeting agendas and video
- County election and candidate filing records
- Candidate filings and certified race lists
- Municipal election notices and local measure text
- Mayors, council members and local body rosters
Independent republishers
These are not government bodies. They are independent organisations that republish official records, and we name them separately so the distinction is never blurred.
- State legislation and state floor votesOpen StatesAn independent nonprofit that republishes each state legislature's own official record.
- Election dates and ballot dataGoogle Civic Information APIGoogle's public API, assembled from state and local election officials' data.
- Candidate and race reference dataBallotpediaAn independent nonprofit encyclopedia of American politics.
- Illinois campaign financeIllinois SunshineA third-party republisher of Illinois State Board of Elections filings (https://elections.il.gov).
- School district directory lookupsUrban Institute Education Data APIAn independent research institute that republishes the federal NCES Common Core of Data (https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/).
- Special district boundaries in CaliforniaCalifornia Special Districts AssociationA membership association of California special districts. Used to tell whether an address is inside a fire, water, healthcare or park district; no federal boundary source publishes these.
- Typical home values by cityZillow Home Value IndexA private company's published research dataset. Used to illustrate what a property-tax measure would cost at a typical local sale price.
- Polling averagesVoteHubAn independent poll aggregator.
- Prediction-market prices on racesPolymarketA private prediction market. Prices are what traders paid, not a forecast by Civilian.
- Supreme Court decisions and argument recordsOyezA free law project of Cornell's Legal Information Institute, Justia and Chicago-Kent.
- Nonprofit and dark-money organisation profilesProPublica Nonprofit ExplorerAn independent newsroom that republishes IRS Form 990 filings (https://www.irs.gov).
- Biographical details for candidates and officialsWikipedia and WikidataIndependent, volunteer-edited encyclopedias.
- Member identifiers and contact records for CongressThe unitedstates/congress-legislators projectAn independent open-data project that compiles the official congressional record.
- Local civic and campaign eventsMobilize and EventbriteIndependent event platforms. Listings are posted by their organisers, not by Civilian.
News
News articles come from independent news outlets across the political spectrum and are always attributed to the outlet that published them. Civilian links out rather than republishing. Plain-English summaries and personal-impact analysis are produced by Civilian and are not official government statements.
Something here wrong or out of date? Tell us — we would rather fix it than defend it.