MAPLight.org is a free, public, web-based database that combines campaign contribution information with how legislators vote, at the state and federal levels. By bringing together campaign contributions and votes, we shine a light on the connection between money and American politics. Our work highlights potential conflicts of interest and helps guard against government corruption. We provide the government transparency needed for citizens to hold legislators accountable—transparency that is critical for a healthy democracy.

For example, MAPLight.org reveals that there is a strong correlation between the campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry and votes in that industry’s favor. On May 7, 2007 the Senate passed an amendment that prevents consumers from buying prescription drugs from abroad, in line with pharmaceutical manufacturers’ interests.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers gave an average of $70,181 in campaign contributions to each Senator who voted to block imports—2.5 times more than the average of $25,914 they gave to each Senator who voted to allow imports.

On another issue, oil drilling in the arctic, the MAPLight.org site reveals that Thelma Drake, a Member of Congress from Virginia, received $8,400 in Oil & Gas industry funds on May 24, 2006, the day before she voted on May 25 to allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

This type of information used to take hours or days to research. Few journalists or citizens had the time or access to do this research. MAPLight.org brings money/vote correlations to light, educating the public about the full money and politics context in which political decisions are made and providing key transparency to hold legislators accountable. The media and public are now armed with the information they need to ask appropriate probing questions of their legislators. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said in 1933, “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

Other examples of the type of information available on MAPLight.org:

• Gambling interests are among the ten highest contributors to Fabian Núñez, Speaker of the California Assembly. In 2003-2004 the gambling industry took a position on 44 bills. Núñez voted with the industry on 42 of these bills—95% of the time.
• In one California legislative session, 21 of the 28 bills supported by health insurance interests became law—a pass rate of 75%. Of the 24 bills health insurance interests opposed, only 1 became law—a kill rate of 96%.

MAPLight.org data is displayed in easily understandable graphs and text. Site navigation is straightforward and uncluttered. Everything is designed for openness and ease of access. We combine our groundbreaking data with “Web 2.0” technologies so that money and politics stories can be distributed easily across the web. MAPLight.org has been designed with unique URLs for each page, to make it easy for bloggers and journalists to link to key findings.

With our powerful “Customize” feature, site visitors can conduct custom analyses of MAPLight.org data and easily share their findings. We recently launched our Presidential Fundraising Widget.

We will soon provide widgets for any NGO or citizen to include customized money and politics data on their website, covering the bills, legislators, and issues that interest them most.

MAPLight.org started with the California state legislature in October 2006 and expanded to include the U.S. Congress in May 2007, we plan to include every state legislature and provide self-service tools for municipalities.

MAPLight.org is part of the emerging “database journalism” movement. Our central purpose is to give people the power to access and analyze the connection between campaign contributions and legislative outcomes. We provide the core research that links two separate public data sources and we provide the tools for searching and presenting the data in compelling an easily understandable ways. Our ability to make this data easily available and sharable is entirely a function of advances in ICT.

The power of MAPLight.org data derives in part from its timeliness. ICT plays a key role in our ability to collect the primary source data. As state and federal legislatures improve their electronic reporting, our ability to analyze the vast amount of information will improve. In the future we expect to be able to automate a great deal of data collection through scripts.

MAPLight.org has a staff of five. We are committed to the open-source model and make our source data freely available to the fullest extent possible.

We combine publicly available data through partnerships with
the National Institute on Money in State Politics, and the Center for Responsive Politics. both of these organizations parse the data released by the state and federal election commissions, which makes it possible for us to marry it to the legislative record.

An organization could certainly replicate what we do in the U.S. We are working on launching to cover other state legislatures and also develop a stand alone tool for local groups working at the county or municipal level.

To transfer the model internationally depends on legislative and campaign finance disclosure for any particular country. We see potential applications of this model for the European Union and Western European countries and the potential for implementing the model in other emerging democracies.

MAPLight.org is a groundbreaking public website that shines a light on the connection between money and politics. We combine two separate public databases: all campaign contributions to every legislator, and how every legislator votes on every bill. Bringing this data together shows the full cycle of money influencing politics. It provides unprecedented insight into the American legislative process and a guard against corruption.

MAPLight.org provides raw money and politics data and aggregated statistics that previously took days to research. Now they are instantly available for public scrutiny. MAPLight.org presents this compelling data with clear graphics and customization features, widgets and unique URLs that allow journalists, bloggers and citizen activists to find the money and politics data about the issue or legislator they are covering and share it across the web in the service of government transparency and accountability.