Ballot305.org

How it works

Ballot305 is a free, independent research tool for Miami-Dade voters. It is built by one Miami Beach resident, not by a campaign, party, or government office. This page explains where the information comes from, how labels are assigned, and what the tool can get wrong.

Where the research comes from

When you tap a candidate or ballot measure, the site runs an AI research assistant (Anthropic's Claude) that searches the web and reads what it finds. It is told to report only what sources say, keep each source's hedges, and link every claim. Links it did not actually find in search are removed automatically.

For ballot measure committees, every payment is listed as the committee filed it: date, purpose in the committee’s own words, and amount. “Online and social media work” adds up the payments whose filed purpose mentions digital, social media, online or similar work; a payment that also covers other work counts in full. Filings show the firm a committee paid, not anyone that firm paid in turn, such as social media creators or ad platforms. Each committee and candidate links to Meta’s public library of political ads on Facebook and Instagram; that search is by name, so it can include ads by others that mention them.

Each result is saved and shared for up to 7 days, so the next voter to look up the same candidate sees the same research. That keeps the site free to run and means everyone sees the same thing.

Donors

Money given directly to a candidate's campaign is listed separately from money given to political committees that support them. Florida limits direct gifts to a campaign ($3,000 per election for statewide offices, $1,000 for most others), so larger amounts went to a committee. For federal candidates, the list includes the candidate's own fundraising committees, since that money funds their campaign.

How local is the money

Each candidate gets two panels: supporting money (campaign donations plus outside groups spending to help) and opposition money (outside groups spending to defeat them). Every itemized gift is placed by the address on the official filing: inside the area that votes for the office, elsewhere in Miami-Dade, elsewhere in Florida, outside Florida, or not reported. People, groups (PACs, companies, unions, parties) and the candidate’s own money are shown separately.

Statewide races count all of Florida. Countywide races and Miami-Dade’s own circuit count Miami-Dade, by ZIP code. City races count addresses whose mailing city is that city, which misses homes inside the city with a “Miami” mailing address. District races (Congress, the Legislature, County Commission, School Board, city districts) are matched to the county or city around the district, not the district itself, and say “located in” that place rather than “in the area that votes for this candidate.” Florida redrew its congressional districts in 2026. Some districts also reach into Broward or Monroe; donors there are counted as elsewhere in Florida. City matches use the mailing city, which many homes inside a city list as “Miami,” so city shares are approximate.

A group is placed by the address it filed under, often its treasurer’s or a Tallahassee office, not by where its own donors live. For federal races, the FEC gives a location only for itemized gifts from people; gifts it doesn’t itemize and all PAC and party money show as not reported. Outside spenders are placed by the address they registered with the FEC. This guide doesn’t yet total spending for or against state and local candidates (groups file those reports with the Florida Division of Elections or the county or city clerk), so those races have no opposition panel. Outside spending is shown in its own row, separate from groups that gave to the campaign. Cities that post only scanned reports have no addresses to count.

Donors, lobbyists and official actions

This section has two parts. The first lists official actions by an incumbent on items that name one of their campaign donors as the applicant, contractor, lobbyist’s client or other party: votes, motions, items they presented, and votes they missed. Each one is checked by hand against the meeting minutes or roll call, and shows the full vote, not only the incumbent’s. Unanimous and consent-agenda votes are included, because influence can show up before a vote is taken: in who brings an item forward, who makes the motion, and whether a donor funds every member. Donation dates are shown as recorded. A gift before or after an action is listed, not judged, and no item here claims a vote was bought. When a donor is a sister company of the party in the item (a different LLC name), it is included only when state corporate records show a shared address and shared managers or registered agent, and the card says what was and was not confirmed.

Each card also lists the registered lobbyists on the item, when the body keeps a lobbyist registry that can be checked: the lobbyist, their firm, the client as the registry writes it, and the registration date (some registries give only the month and year). A lobbyist’s registration date before or after the vote is shown as recorded. Items a registered lobbyist worked on are included even when no one involved gave to the candidate; those cards say so. In Aventura and North Miami Beach the review started from the city’s own registry: every land-use approval, contract and appointment a registered client asked for from 2022 on was found in the signed resolutions (Aventura) or the minutes (North Miami Beach), and the incumbent’s vote recorded. Many of those records are scans; they were read with text recognition and each vote checked against the page. North Miami Beach’s minutes also record each member’s sworn disclosure of who they spoke with before land-use votes, and cards quote it when names are given. Where a registration and a resolution spell the client differently, both spellings are shown and they are not treated as the same company without a source that says so. Registries used: Miami-Dade County, Coral Gables, Doral, Aventura (list of May 6, 2026), North Miami Beach (2023, 2024 and Aug. 13, 2026 lists), and the lobbyists named on state budget request forms.

Every candidate in a city race, and in County Commission District 5, gets a status line when there are no actions to show: not a current member of that body; a current member whose actions were reviewed and none named a donor; a current member whose itemized reports are not available, so the check can’t be done; a current member whose reports list no outside donors; or a current member not yet reviewed. A review searches the posted minutes, agendas and resolutions for the names of the member’s business, PAC and larger individual donors. It covers what each city has posted online, which differs by city, so “none found” means none in the records searched. All of it, city by city, is on the Donors, lobbyists and official actions page.

State legislators don’t vote on contracts and permits the way city councils do, so for Florida House and Senate incumbents on the ballot the list covers two other kinds of action. First, state budget project requests they filed (House Appropriations Project Request forms and Senate Local Funding Initiative Request forms for the 2025 and 2026 sessions) where the organization receiving the money gave to them, or where the lobbying firm named on the form as the registered lobbyist, its PAC, or its lobbyists gave to them. Requests lobbied by the same firm are grouped into one card that lists each project. Second, bills they filed where a donor is a clear beneficiary; the card says how the donor is tied to the bill and does not claim the donor asked for it. Third, their floor votes on bills that became law where the Legislature’s own staff analysis says the bill helps a kind of business that gave to them, described in the next section. Donations come from the Florida Division of Elections for 2025 and 2026, and include gifts to a political committee the legislator chairs, labeled as such. Every request form these legislators filed for the 2025 and 2026 sessions was read. Each card says whether each request is in the final budget and whether the governor vetoed it, checked as described below.

The second part lists donors who gave to more than one candidate. For a city race it compares every race in that city on the ballot; otherwise, the candidates in the same race. It uses the official county and city reports (Miami-Dade Elections, VoterFocus and EasyVote city portals, and the city reports typed in from scans). Givers are matched by name, ignoring endings like “Inc.” or “LLC” and anything after “d/b/a.” Companies, PACs and unions are also grouped when they list the same street address, which is how one developer’s many LLCs show up as one giver. People are never grouped by address, since family members share homes. A shared address does not prove shared ownership. Federal and state races are not compared here yet.

Members of Congress

Members of the U.S. House can ask for money for specific local projects (Community Project Funding) and must post each request with the group that would get the money. For the five House members on Miami-Dade’s November 3 ballot (Mario Diaz-Balart, Maria Elvira Salazar, Carlos A. Gimenez, Jared Moskowitz and Byron Donalds, who is running for governor), every request for fiscal years 2026 and 2027 is listed: fiscal year 2026 from the House Appropriations Committee’s consolidated table, and fiscal year 2027 from each member’s own request page, which for some members gives rounded amounts (the card says so). Senator Ashley Moody made no such requests: the Senate Appropriations Committee’s charts of every senator’s requests for 2026 and 2027 list none from her.

Most of these requests are for cities, counties, universities and sheriff’s offices, which cannot give to campaigns. So the link is through lobbying, the same rule as for state budget requests: each group was looked up in the federal Lobbying Disclosure Act reports for 2025 and 2026 (lda.gov), and a request shows a gift when one of the firms registered to lobby for that group, the firm’s political committee, or one of the firm’s lobbyists gave to the member’s campaign. Gifts come from the lobbyists’ and firms’ own contribution reports to Congress (LD-203), from January 2025 on. Each one was looked up in the campaign’s itemized FEC receipts; a gift not found there (often a small or recent one the campaign has not itemized yet) says so. Gifts to joint fundraising committees and to state campaigns are left out. A county department or port counts as the county; sheriff’s offices, which are now separate from the county, do not. Requests for groups with no federal lobbying registration are listed without gifts. Whether each request was funded in the final spending bills was not checked.

The Congress tabs also show floor votes: recorded roll calls of the full House (Clerk of the House) and Senate (senate.gov) on bills that became law in 2025, where a Congressional Budget Office cost estimate, a Congressional Research Service report or the federal rule being overturned names the kind of business affected, and where businesses of that kind gave to one of these members through their PACs. Five laws qualified: H.J.Res. 35 (P.L. 119-2, ending the EPA’s methane fee on oil and gas facilities), S.J.Res. 18 (P.L. 119-10, ending the CFPB’s overdraft fee rule for banks and credit unions with $10 billion or more in assets), H.J.Res. 88 (P.L. 119-16, ending California’s rule requiring carmakers to sell a rising share of zero-emission cars), S. 1582, the GENIUS Act (P.L. 119-27, federal rules for stablecoin issuers), and S. 1071, the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 119-60). Each vote quotes the sentence it rests on and links the roll call and the source. The donors counted for each are named companies and trade groups in that business: Chevron, Williams Companies and Phillips 66 for the methane fee; banks over $10 billion in assets and the bank and credit union trade groups for overdraft fees; General Motors, Toyota, JM Family Enterprises (a Toyota distributor) and the auto dealers’ association for the California rule; Coinbase for the GENIUS Act; and companies whose main business is defense contracting for the NDAA. Only PAC gifts to the member’s principal campaign committee from January 2025 on are counted, from the campaign’s itemized FEC receipts; gifts from employees are not, and a PAC that gave more than once is one line with its total, number of gifts and date range. For Senator Moody each law shows her final Senate vote; for House members, the final House vote. Many other 2025 laws affect business in general (the July 2025 tax and spending law, for example) and are left out because no one industry is named. Nothing here claims a donor asked for a bill or a vote.

The one-line money summary

Each incumbent on the ballot gets one line that adds up the gifts on the official actions by vote page. It counts every gift tied to at least one action, from the incumbent’s campaign and from any political committee they chair, once each, however many actions it ties to. The donor count groups names that differ only by endings like “Inc.” or “LLC.” Only gifts dated January 1, 2025 or later are counted.

For city and county officials, the line says how many of those actions the incumbent voted yes on, no on, or missed, and how many were split votes. For members of Congress, it counts the earmark requests whose group’s lobbying firms gave, and the money from those firms, their PACs and their lobbyists, and then, separately, PAC money from kinds of business helped by laws they voted yes on. For state legislators, it keeps two kinds of money apart: gifts tied to budget requests they filed (with the number of requests, the dollars asked for, and how much made the final budget after the governor’s vetoes), and gifts from kinds of business helped by bills they voted yes on. A gift tied to both is counted with the budget requests.

“Came before an action” means the gift is dated before at least one of the actions it ties to. A lobbying firm that gave once and then worked on several items counts as before if any of those items came after the gift. The line reports timing; it does not say a gift caused a vote.

Who held the office on that date

Every action on this site is tied to a person, and to the term that person was serving on the day of the action, not to whoever holds the seat today. The roster behind this (roster.json) lists each person once, with every office they held and when. A person who moved from the State House to the County Commission, or who has the same last name as someone else, is still one record, and two people are never merged because their names look alike. Two records are joined only when a source says they are the same person.

Where the terms come from:

Automatic checks run on every change: every action must name a person in the roster who held a seat on that body on the action’s date, and every vote must be cast by someone seated that day. A change that breaks either rule fails the checks.

Starting from the vote

The official actions by vote page works the other way around. It starts from what the Miami-Dade County Commission decided, not from a candidate’s donors. The page is grouped by the race on the ballot (U.S. Senate, U.S. House, Governor, State Senate, State House, County Commission, each city), not by the body a candidate serves on now, and each action is labeled with the body where it happened. A state representative running for U.S. Senate, for example, is listed under U.S. Senate with her Florida House actions. Every item the commission acted on from November 18, 2025 (when Commissioner Vicki L. Lopez was seated) through October 6, 2026 was searched for a named private company, developer or group that gets a contract, lease, county land, zoning approval, money or a change to an existing deal. Each item shows the full roll call from the Clerk of the Board’s minutes (the motion, the tally, each “no” and each absence), checked against the roll call in the signed resolution where the clerk posts one; on all 72 items with both, they match. It then lists everyone the county’s lobbyist registry shows for that company in 2025 or 2026, with the registration date. Only the two commissioners on the November 3 ballot have their donors checked: Lopez (her county campaign and the Common Sense Government political committee she chairs) and Oliver G. Gilbert III (his federal campaign for U.S. House). A gift is listed when the giver is the company itself; when the giver has the same name as a registered lobbyist on the item and the report shows the same address or a lobbying-type job; or when the giver is one of four lobbying firms (Bercow Radell Fernandez Larkin & Tapanes, Capital City Consulting, LSN Partners, Pantin Gov) at the same office address as a registered lobbyist on the item. Each gift says which of these applies. Other companies at the same address as an applicant are not counted, because a shared address does not show who owns them. State legislators will be added next.

Cities follow the same steps where the records allow. In Coral Gables, every commission item from January 2025 on was pulled from the city’s Legistar system with each member’s recorded vote; the list keeps items whose agenda names a lobbyist or whose company is in the city’s 2024-2026 lobbyist registrations, plus items whose company gave to a commissioner on the ballot. A registration counts if it is in the list for the year of the vote or was filed within the year before, and not withdrawn before the vote. In Doral, every council meeting’s minutes from January 2025 on were read; Doral posts only its current lobbyist list (with each lobbyist’s clients), so a 2025 item can show a lobbyist registered after the vote. In Aventura and North Miami Beach the list starts from the cities’ own registries, as described above. North Miami, South Miami, Pinecrest, Opa-locka and Medley post no lobbyist registry we could find, so their lists start from items that name a donor of an official on the ballot, and each gift carries a note on how it connects. Each city’s section on the page says which of these applies. Where the minutes say only that a vote was unanimous, the members shown are the ones seated at the time, taken from roll calls in the same period; where that can’t be confirmed, only the names the record gives are shown.

For the Florida Legislature, the actions are the budget requests that each Miami-Dade legislator on the ballot filed: every House Appropriations Project Request for the 2025 and 2026 sessions and every Senate Local Funding Initiative Request for fiscal years 2025–26 and 2026–27. Each form names the member who filed it, the group that would receive the money and the registered lobbyist working on it, if any. A request is shown with a gift when the group receiving the money, the lobbying firm named on the form, that firm’s political committee or one of that firm’s lobbyists gave to the member’s campaign account or to a political committee the member chairs, from January 2025 on, at any amount. Lobbyist names are as the form spells them. Each one is checked against the Legislature’s 2024, 2025 and 2026 lobbyist registrations (the lists by client, downloaded October 2026): the request says whether that lobbyist is registered for a client with the same name as the group on the form, is registered only for other clients, or is not in any of the three lists. Client names are matched when they are the same apart from words like “Inc.”, “Foundation” or “Board of Commissioners”, and each “d/b/a” name counts on its own. A county department counts as the county. Where the registry spells a client differently, both names are shown, and where the match is to the group making the request rather than the one receiving the money, the request says so. Each request is then looked up in the final General Appropriations Act the Legislature passed for that year: SB 2500 (chapter 2025-198) for 2025–26 and HB 5001E (chapter 2026-232) for 2026–27. Projects in those acts carry the form numbers in parentheses, “(HF ####)” for a House request and “(SF ####)” for a Senate request, so the match is by form number, not by name. The amount shown is the figure printed for that line; when a project is split across more than one line (for example general revenue and a trust fund) the lines are added, and when the act names the project only in a sentence, the amount is the one in that sentence, or none if the sentence gives more than one. Mentions in the sections that carry unspent money forward from earlier years are left out, because those sections cite earlier years’ form numbers. Vetoes come from the governor’s veto list for each year (2025, 2026), which also lists form numbers. “Not in the final budget” means that form number does not appear; the same project could still be funded under the other chamber’s form number or inside a larger line that does not name it. There is no roll call for a request, so only the member who filed it is shown. Angie Nixon, the state representative from Jacksonville (District 13) who is on the ballot for U.S. Senate, is included the same way: her six requests (none names a registered lobbyist) and her floor votes. For her, gifts were checked in her state campaign accounts and in her U.S. Senate campaign’s FEC reports; none came from a group she asked money for, its contacts, or a business of the kinds the floor-vote bills help.

The state tabs also show floor votes. These are recorded roll calls of the full House or Senate on bills that became law in 2025 or 2026 (from the Laws of Florida list), where the House or Senate staff analysis of the bill names the kind of business it helps, and where a business of that kind, or that industry’s political committee, gave to one of these members. Six bills qualified: HB 429 (2025, franchised car dealers), HB 1137 (2026, alcoholic beverage distributors), SB 1730 (2025) and HB 1389 (2026, affordable-housing developments under the Live Local Act), HB 1525 (2025, ride-hailing companies), and HB 1175 (2026, physicians who have office surgical suites). Each vote quotes the analysis sentence it rests on and links the roll call and the analysis. A donor is counted only when its name or the occupation it reported says it is in that group: car dealerships with Florida addresses and the South Florida automobile dealers’ committee; Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits and the Florida Beer Wholesalers’ committee; the affordable-housing developers already listed for HB 1389; Uber and Lyft; and Florida Surgical Alliance, a political committee whose own reports show surgeons and physicians as nearly all of its donors (the reports do not say whether they have office surgical suites). Floridians for Surgical Safety, whose money comes from a sterile-processing trade group, is left out. Companies that reported only “beverage distributor” without saying they sell alcohol, and dealerships outside Florida, are left out. Gifts are from the member’s campaign account and any political committee the member chairs, January 2025 to October 2026, with the dates recorded, including gifts after the vote; nothing here claims a donor asked for a bill or a vote. Most of these votes were unanimous or close to it, which the tally shows. Bills that died, and bills whose analysis does not name who benefits, are not included, and the roll calls of committees are not shown.

Open data

Everything above is published as open data at /api (JSON endpoints and the raw files, CC BY 4.0). Each tie between a gift and an action carries the kind of match, what it rests on, and whether the gift came before or after the action, as fields rather than footnotes, so anyone building on the data keeps the caveats.

City transparency check

The city transparency check rates each city on the ballot against eight basics, three about campaign money (current reports posted, past reports posted, donors searchable as data) and five about meetings (agendas with backup documents, minutes posted, votes recorded by name, searchable text, video). The first two follow Miami-Dade County Code section 12-7, which since 2023 requires each city to post its candidates’ campaign finance reports within 7 days and keep its previous two elections’ reports up. Each rating is yes, partly or no, checked by hand against the city’s own websites and the official systems they link to, and links the page it rests on. It shows what a voter can find online, so a “no” means we could not find it, not proof that a record does not exist.

Data coverage and open records requests

Official donor records are not available the same way everywhere. Federal, state and county candidates file in public databases, and the app reads every contribution from them. City candidates file with each city clerk, and cities publish those reports in different ways, or not at all. Miami-Dade County Code §12-7 (Ordinance 23-63, 2023) requires every city in the county to post its current candidates' campaign finance reports on its website within 7 days of receiving them. It doesn't require a searchable format, so a scanned PDF counts.

Where a city's official records aren't available to the app, a candidate's donors come from news and web research, and the candidate's page says so. Where we couldn't find a city's reports online, we asked the clerk for them in a public records request. This table shows where each request stands.

Loading…

Outside spending

Since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, groups can spend unlimited money on their own ads, mail and texts for or against a candidate, as long as they don't coordinate with the campaign. This money never goes to the campaign, so it is not listed as a donation. It is shown in its own Outside Spending section, split into money spent to help the candidate and money spent to defeat them.

About each group

Every organization in a money list (campaign donors, committee donors, outside spenders, ballot measure funders, and the funders of those groups) has an "About this group" panel. Funders shown inside a panel have their own panels, so you can follow money from a PAC to the PAC that funds it and on to the nonprofit behind that. A group is matched to a federal committee or IRS nonprofit only on an exact name match. When there is no match, the panel says so and links to searches of Florida business records, IRS nonprofit records and FEC committees.

Florida political committees (state PACs and similar groups) are matched by exact name in the Florida Division of Elections committee database. The panel shows the committee's status, chair, treasurer and registered agent, how much it has reported raising in 2025–2026, and its top funders in that period from the state's contribution records. A company that once registered a committee under its own name (a closed committee with no recent activity) is treated as the company, not that old committee. When a Florida committee shows up as a donor in FEC records, the panel compares the city in the FEC record with the committee's address and says whether they match, so a different group with the same name isn't mistaken for it.

For federal committees, the panel is built from its own FEC filings:

Super PACs file donor reports monthly or quarterly, so the newest money can take weeks to appear. Each panel shows the date its figures run through.

Money to allied committees

For state and county candidates, the candidate's own political committee (for example "Friends of [candidate]") is found among the campaign's donors in official filings. For each one, the page shows what it raised in 2025–2026, its largest donors with the date of each gift, and what it gave the campaign directly, all from the Florida Division of Elections. Florida committees report spending by who they paid (consultants, ad firms), not by which candidate it helped, so the rest of their spending for a candidate can't be totaled from state records. Committee donations found only in news or web sources are not shown, because they can’t be checked against filings and often lack a committee name or date.

Biggest backers

Near the top of each candidate and ballot measure page, "Biggest Backers Behind the Money" lists the people, companies and groups who gave the most to the committees and outside groups in that race, so they aren't buried inside nested panels. It starts from the outside groups spending for or against a candidate, the committees backing the candidate, or the committees for and against a measure. It takes each group's largest donors from official filings. When a donor is itself a PAC or political committee, it looks one step further back at that committee's largest donors. Each row shows the path the money took, for example: gave $X to Committee A, which gave $Y to Super PAC B, which spent $Z to help this candidate.

Time period

Endorsements, opposition and ratings must be for the November 2026 election. Ones from a candidate's earlier campaigns, even for the same office, are removed: anything dated before 2025 by the source or its link is dropped, and the rest is checked for signs of an earlier race. Group funders and totals cover the current two-year election cycle (2025–2026). Federal data uses the FEC's 2026 cycle. Florida committee data is limited to contributions dated January 1, 2025 or later. Candidate donors come from each candidate's filings for the November 2026 election. Donors, committee donors and outside spenders found through web research (where no official record was available) are held to the same rule: anything dated before 2025, or pointing to an earlier campaign, is removed.

Where the money trail stops

Some money can't be traced to the people who originally gave it. When that happens, the site says so plainly instead of hiding it:

DONORS NOT DISCLOSED
The group is a nonprofit, such as a 501(c)(4) or 501(c)(6), or an outside group that is not a registered PAC. These groups are not required to name their donors. This is legal and is used by groups across the political spectrum. A Public records link opens what is on file, such as its tax filings or FEC registration.
OWNERS NOT LISTED
The donor is a limited liability company (LLC). A donation in a company name doesn't show who owns the company. A Public records link opens its Florida business record, which lists its officers or managers.

Left, right, and nonpartisan labels

Every endorser, opponent, and funder except labor unions gets a label describing the group's general political alignment, not the candidate's:

LEFT RIGHT NONPARTISAN

Party organizations and ideological advocacy groups get the side they are aligned with. Sheriff and police chief associations, bar associations, and the League of Women Voters are always labeled nonpartisan. Newspapers and their editorial boards are labeled “News outlet” with no lean, since an editorial board can endorse candidates of either party.

The fixed list, applied the same way in every race (everything else is labeled by research):

Labor unions get no left or right label. Instead they show the kind of workers they represent, such as TEACHERS FIREFIGHTERS or POLICE, plus a LABOR UNION tag. This applies the same way to every union, including police, firefighter and teacher unions and labor federations like the AFL-CIO.

Groups that appear in many races use one fixed label everywhere, so the same group is never labeled differently in two places. Labels for other groups are assigned during research and are a judgment call. If you think one is wrong, tell us (see below).

The Federalist Society screen (judges only)

The Federalist Society is a national organization of conservative and libertarian lawyers. Membership is legal and common, and it is not a mark against anyone. Voters asked to know about these ties because the group has played a large role in judicial appointments. Every judicial candidate gets one of three results:

DOCUMENTED TIES
The judge states their own membership or a chapter role, or the Federalist Society lists them as a member or officer, or records show them speaking at two or more of its events on different dates.
POSSIBLE TIES
One appearance at a Federalist Society event, or a named journalist, academic, or voter guide that asserts ties to this judge by name. Speaking at one event does not mean membership. Judges of every outlook speak at its events.
NO TIES FOUND
Nothing in searched coverage, bios, or event records connects the judge to the Federalist Society.

Evidence only counts if it names the judge. Articles about appointment trends, applicant pools, or a court in general are not used. Each result is checked a second time against these rules before it is shown, and that check can only lower a result, never raise it.

Registered lobbyists

For Miami-Dade County races, each candidate's givers are checked against the Miami-Dade Clerk of the Board's lobbyist registrations for the current year. A company or group counts as a lobbyist client when its name matches a client named in a registration, ignoring Inc, LLC, punctuation and capitalization. A person counts as a registered lobbyist when their first and last name match a registration and either the ZIP code on the registration matches the ZIP code on the gift or the occupation filed with the gift is lobbying, government affairs or consulting. Being registered means the person or company told the County it lobbies, or hires someone to lobby, County officials. It is not an accusation of anything. This check is only shown for County offices, because those are the officials County lobbyists lobby.

School Board races get the same check against the School Board's own list of registered lobbyists (fiscal years 2025-26 and 2026-27). That list gives no addresses. Where exactly one person with the same first and last name is registered with Miami-Dade County, the office address from that county registration is used; otherwise a person counts as a lobbyist only when the name matches and the occupation filed with the gift is lobbying, government affairs or consulting.

A company or firm is labeled Lobbyist's office when its filed address, including the suite number or PO box, is the registered office address of one or more registered lobbyists. That can be a lobbying or law firm, or a company that shares an office with people registered to lobby for its projects. The label states the shared address only.

Ballot measures

For each referendum and amendment, the site looks for registered committees on each side, their major funders, and organizations publicly supporting or opposing it in this election. A group's position on an earlier version of a measure is not shown as support or opposition this time.

Where the committees for and against a measure file electronically with the clerk, the money section is built from their own reports instead of web research: every contributor and its share of the total, the biggest places the money went, and the report dates covered. Each report's line items must add up to the totals the clerk posts for it, or the update is held back and the last matching version stays up.

Committees that file with a city clerk or the Miami-Dade Elections Department are read from VoterFocus, where each report's line items must match the clerk's posted totals. Committees that file with the state (constitutional amendments) are read from the Florida Division of Elections' contribution and expenditure records for 2025-2026, keeping only rows filed under the committee's exact name. When no committee is found for a question, the page says so and names the records that were checked and the date.

Each measure also shows a few numbers computed from those filings, with no words added: how much each side raised, from how many different givers, the largest giver's share, and what share came from businesses, people and political committees. "Per registered voter" is both sides' money added together, divided by the registered voters where the question is decided (the state's book-closing count for the Nov. 3, 2026 election; for the City of Miami, the county's registration totals for City of Miami districts 1-5 as of Oct. 1, 2026).

A giver is tied to what a question decides only with one of these labels, each linked to a source that says it outright: Party to the deal (the giver, or a company it co-owns, gets the contract, lease or sale the question decides); Current operator (the giver runs a business today on the property the question decides); At the property (the giver's filed address is the property the question decides); Political committee (the giver is itself a political committee, with where it files when it uses another name); Contractor (the giver, or the company its filing names it as leading, has had a contract with the government that put the question on the ballot, in effect in 2024 or later, shown in that government's own records). No other descriptions of givers' motives are written for these pages.

Finding your ballot by address

The home page can find your precinct from your street address or your phone’s location, then show the countywide ballot filtered to your precinct. Two public services do the work, and both are called from your browser, not from this site: the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder turns the address into coordinates, and the county’s own precinct map (Miami-Dade GIS, Precinct layer) says which precinct those coordinates fall in. The address is not sent to Ballot305 and is not saved anywhere; only the precinct number is kept on your device. If your browser cannot reach those services directly, the request is passed through this site unchanged and nothing is logged.

Which races a precinct votes on comes from the Supervisor of Elections’ precinct / district cross reference dated October 1, 2026. The county map was checked against that list on October 23, 2026: every precinct on the list is on the map. Where the county splits a precinct in two (116.0 and 116.1, for example) the map does not tell them apart, so the page shows both and asks you to confirm on the county’s voter lookup. A geocoder can also place an address on the wrong side of a street, so your own sample ballot is the final word.

What the tool can get wrong

Order of endorsements

Newspaper editorial board endorsements are listed first, then every other endorsement in the order research found them. Editorial boards take sides too; they are listed first because voters often look for them, not because they count more.

Report an error

Every candidate and measure page has a Report a problem with this page link at the bottom. Reports go straight to the site owner, who reviews them within 24 hours and takes down anything false while it is corrected. You can also write to corrections@ballot305.org, open an issue on GitHub or message @realbritty on Instagram with the candidate's name and what you found. Corrections are made as fast as possible.

Open source

All of the code, including the exact research instructions and the fixed label list, is public on GitHub under the MIT license.