To research a candidate for office, work outward from the records the candidate cannot control: voting histories, campaign finance filings, ethics disclosures, lobbying registrations, and court records. Start with what the candidate publishes about themselves to get a baseline, then verify every substantive claim against government databases and independent fact-checkers. What a candidate has actually done in public life is documented somewhere; the work is knowing where to look.
Start With What the Candidate Publishes
The campaign website is the natural first stop. Most sites have an “Issues” or “Platform” page and a biography covering professional background and community involvement. This is polished marketing, but it establishes a baseline: what the candidate wants to emphasize, and what they leave out. Press releases show how the campaign handles breaking news and which topics it treats as priorities.
Social media accounts on X, Facebook, and Instagram show unscripted moments a campaign site won’t. Watch how a candidate responds to criticism, whether the messaging stays consistent across platforms, and how they interact with constituents who push back. A candidate who posts detailed policy threads is telling you something different than one who posts only attack clips. Recordings of town halls, rallies, and debate appearances reveal how well a candidate handles pressure and unscripted questions.
Treat everything from the candidate as a starting point, not a conclusion. The rest of this guide is about verification.
Pull the Voting Record
For any incumbent or former officeholder, the voting record is the single most revealing document. What a candidate voted for matters more than what their website says they support. Congress.gov publishes every roll call vote cast in the House and Senate, searchable by member, bill, or date.1Congress.gov. Roll Call Votes by the U.S. Congress The Senate maintains its own roll call archive compiled by the bill clerk.2United States Senate. Votes
Congress.gov also lets you search legislation by sponsor and cosponsor, so you can see which bills a member championed or signed onto.3Congress.gov. Sponsors and Cosponsors A candidate who claims to prioritize veterans’ issues should have a visible record of sponsoring or cosponsoring related bills. The gap between rhetoric and legislative activity is often where the most useful information sits.
State legislatures maintain similar databases for state-level officeholders, usually under “votes” or “roll calls” on the legislature’s official site. The interface varies by state; the information is public.
Follow the Campaign Money
Who funds a candidate suggests who that candidate listens to. The Federal Election Commission runs a searchable public database covering every federal race, including individual donors, PAC contributions, party committee transfers, and detailed spending reports.4Federal Election Commission. Campaign Finance Data You can search by candidate, by committee, or by donor name.
Look for patterns rather than individual donations. A candidate who draws a large share of funding from a single industry may face pressure to protect that industry’s interests. Spending patterns matter too: heavy consultant spending versus direct voter outreach tells you something about priorities. OpenSecrets aggregates FEC data and adds context about outside spending and “dark money” groups that don’t run through the candidate’s official committee.
For state and local races, each state’s election commission or secretary of state publishes campaign finance filings. The National Institute on Money in Politics, at FollowTheMoney.org, compiles state-level contribution data across all 50 states, which is useful for candidates who have never run federally.
Read the Financial and Ethics Disclosures
Campaign donations show who’s funding the race. Financial disclosures show the candidate’s own money. Presidential and vice presidential candidates must file OGE Form 278e with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, covering outside positions, employment income and retirement accounts, employment agreements, compensation sources over $5,000 per year, spousal employment and assets, other assets and income, financial transactions, liabilities, and gifts or travel reimbursements.5U.S. Office of Government Ethics. OGE Form 278e Overview Reporting on assets, transactions, liabilities, and gifts extends to the filer’s spouse and dependent children.
These disclosures are public through the Office of Government Ethics, which maintains a searchable collection of individual filings and accepts requests online or by PDF form.6U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Officials Individual Disclosures Search Collection Federal law requires OGE to destroy most disclosure reports six to seven years after creation, so older filings may no longer be available.
Members of Congress file separate financial disclosures through the House or Senate ethics offices. State candidates have their own requirements, which vary; your state’s ethics commission website is usually the right starting point.
Check Lobbying Connections
Lobbying records show which industries and organizations are trying to influence the officials you’re evaluating. The Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Act database lets you search registrations and quarterly activity reports by lobbyist, client, issue area, or the specific government entity contacted.7Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA). Search Registrations and Quarterly Activity Reports The database also tracks whether a lobbyist has held a covered government position, which reveals the revolving door between public service and private influence.
Contribution reports filed under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, known as LD-203 filings, are searchable separately and show political contributions made by registered lobbyists. If a candidate’s major donors include lobbyists for a particular industry, and that industry is lobbying a committee the candidate serves on, that connection is worth understanding before you vote.
Search Court Records
Candidates don’t always volunteer information about lawsuits, bankruptcies, or criminal charges. Federal court records are publicly accessible through PACER, which covers every federal district, appellate, and bankruptcy court.8PACER: Federal Court Records. Find a Case The PACER Case Locator is a nationwide index, updated daily, that returns every federal court where a named party has been involved in litigation.
PACER requires a registered account and charges a small per-page fee, with a waiver below a set quarterly threshold. If you’d rather skip the account, the RECAP Archive at CourtListener.com offers free access to millions of PACER documents contributed by other users. It isn’t comprehensive, but for prominent candidates, the relevant filings are often already there.
For state court records, check the judiciary website for any state where the candidate has lived or worked. Most state court systems now offer online case search, though depth varies.
Cross-Check With Fact-Checkers and Voter Guides
Once you have raw data from government sources, independent fact-checkers help you evaluate the claims candidates make. The most reliable are verified by the International Fact-Checking Network, which requires adherence to standards on nonpartisanship, transparency, and corrections. U.S.-based IFCN signatories include PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Snopes, the Washington Post Fact Checker, and Reuters.
Nonpartisan voter guides collect candidate information in one place. Ballotpedia has a sample ballot lookup: enter your address and see every race on your upcoming ballot, plus biographies, past results, and candidate survey responses. Coverage is most complete for federal and statewide races and for local races in the 100 most-populated U.S. cities. The League of Women Voters publishes voter guides with candidate questionnaires, often covering races larger platforms miss.
Interest group scorecards are another lens, with context. Groups across the political spectrum rate officeholders on votes they care about. Vote Smart collects hundreds of these ratings on a 0-to-100 scale regardless of ideology. A candidate with a 95% rating from an environmental group and a 10% rating from a gun rights group is telling you something clear. These scores reflect the rating organization’s priorities, not an objective measure of quality.
Local Candidates Take Extra Effort
School board members, city council candidates, and county commissioners fly under the radar, and their decisions often affect daily life most directly, from property taxes to school curricula to zoning.
Local newspaper archives are the best single resource. Even small-town papers cover council votes, school board disputes, and candidate forums. Many are searchable online, and a public library card often gives free access to digital newspaper databases. Your city’s public access cable channel may also broadcast forums that don’t get wider coverage.
When online sources run thin, go analog. Attend candidate forums and town halls hosted by civic organizations. Ask neighbors and coworkers who have interacted with the candidate or, for an incumbent, been affected by their decisions. Most local government bodies publish meeting minutes online; a school board candidate who has never attended a school board meeting is telling you something about their level of engagement. For local campaign finance, check your state or county election office site. Even small races typically require some disclosure, and the donors behind a city council race can reveal useful patterns.
Evaluating Judicial Candidates
Judicial races are harder to research because judges don’t campaign on policy platforms, and most voters skip these races. For federal judicial nominees, the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary evaluates each nominee and assigns one of three ratings: Well Qualified, Qualified, or Not Qualified. The ratings focus on integrity, competence, and judicial temperament rather than ideology, which makes them a reasonable nonpartisan starting point.
For state and local judicial candidates, many state bar associations publish similar evaluations or voter guides; search your state bar’s site for “judicial evaluation” or “judicial voter guide.” Past judicial opinions, when available, show directly how a judge reasons and rules. Federal court opinions issued after April 2004 are available through the U.S. Government Publishing Office website.
Watch for AI-Generated Misinformation
Fabricated audio and video of candidates have become a real factor in elections, and the technology is now good enough that visual tells like distorted hands or unnatural skin are no longer reliable indicators. As of early 2026, at least 28 states have enacted laws requiring disclaimers on AI-generated political content, typically labels stating that material was created or substantially altered using artificial intelligence. Compliance is uneven, and unlabeled synthetic content circulates widely.
The practical defense is verification, not detection. When you encounter a surprising or emotionally charged clip, check whether credible news outlets or IFCN-verified fact-checkers have reported on it, and search for the original source. If a video appears only on social media accounts and no legitimate news organization has covered it, treat it with heavy skepticism. The Artificial Intelligence Incident Database, run by the Responsible AI Collaborative, accepts submissions of suspected AI-generated content for review.
Avoid using AI chatbots or AI-integrated search engines as your source of election information. These tools can generate plausible-sounding but fabricated details about candidates. Go to official sources: the candidate’s verified accounts, government databases, and established news outlets.