POLISCOPE
Your government, decoded in plain English.
POLISCOPE connects legislation, campaign money, corporate filings, government contracts, and local meetings, so any citizen can see who is influencing the decisions that affect their community.
Why this matters
Nobody is watching local government
The decisions with the most direct effect on your life draw the fewest voters, the least coverage, and the hardest language.
Turnout
Nobody shows up for local elections
Across America’s 30 largest cities, a third of the most recent mayoral elections drew under 15% of eligible voters. The officials closest to your daily life are picked by the smallest group of people.
America’s 30 largest cities, most recent mayoral election
Who votes
And the people who do are not young
Just 9% of registered voters aged 18 to 34 cast a ballot in their last mayoral election, against 46.7% of those over 65. The median person actually voting was 57.
Share of registered voters casting a ballot, by age, in the last mayoral election.
Coverage
And nobody is left to report it
Two hundred and thirteen U.S. counties have no local news outlet at all, and another 1,524 are down to a single remaining source. That leaves roughly 50 million Americans with limited or no access to local news. High-impact decisions continue to be made without people paying attention.
Source: Medill Local News Initiative, State of Local News 2025
U.S. counties by number of remaining local news outlets, 2025.
Our Mission
“Make the relationship between money, lobbying, and legislation visible to every American, not just the people who can afford lobbyists.”
Most people never know who funded a politician before a key vote, which LLC officers are also campaign donors, or which contractors won government contracts right after donating. That information is all public; it is just scattered across dozens of government databases in formats nobody wants to read. We connect the dots and translate it into something anyone can understand and verify.
Scattered government data
Bills, campaign finance, lobbying, contracts, and corporate filings live in dozens of separate portals. We pull them into one searchable platform.
Unreadable legal language
Plain-English summaries on every bill and meeting agenda, so you can read in minutes what would take hours otherwise.
Hidden money connections
Campaign donations, corporate officers, and government contracts are cross-referenced so you can trace who is funding whom. Every claim is linked back to the original record.
Local decisions you miss
County commission meetings, zoning variances, and school board decisions have the biggest impact on your daily life, but get the least coverage.
What you get
What POLISCOPE does
Ask Anything
The AI research assistant on every page (bottom right) answers plain-English questions about bills, people, money, and local activity, grounded in the indexed public record.
Local Pulse
Your civic front page: what your local government did this week, meetings, bills, money, and news, scoped to your county or city.
Plain-English Summaries
Every bill and meeting agenda gets an automated plain-language summary. Know what a bill does in 30 seconds without reading 80 pages of legalese.
Explore the Record
Search and filter bills, contracts, agendas, meetings, and civic activity across federal, state, and local government in one unified record.
Connection Map Editor
Build your own interactive connection maps: pick people, organizations, and bills, and the editor lays out sourced relationships you can edit, save, and share.
Follow the Money
Campaign donations, government contracts, lobbying registrations, and corporate filings are cross-referenced so you can trace who is funding whom, every claim linked back to the source record.
Local Government Coverage
County commission meetings, school board agendas, and planning and zoning decisions: the local decisions that affect your daily life most.
People & Representatives
Elected officials and candidates with voting records, campaign donors, and plain-language profiles you can search by name or district.
Ballots & Elections
Build and share a personal ballot, compare candidates side by side, and follow races and results as they come in.
Source Ledger
Where the data comes from
All data is sourced from publicly available government records and open-access datasets. Every finding cites its source.
Congress.gov
Federal bills, resolutions, and committee activity.
OpenFEC
Federal campaign finance: contributions, expenditures, PACs.
VoterFocus
County-level campaign finance for Sarasota, Manatee, and the FL pilot counties.
FL Sunbiz
151,000+ Florida corporate entities and 314,000+ officers for corporate trace.
USASpending.gov
Federal contracts and grants awarded in Sarasota and Manatee counties.
Senate LDA & House Clerk
Federal lobbying registrations, quarterly filings, and 1.1M+ disclosures.
OpenStates & FL Legislature
Multi-state bill tracking, Florida 2026 session, and legislator profiles.
News RSS (20+ outlets)
Left-to-right media coverage rated by political lean.
In the index: 1,385,844 documents · 1,185,985 entities · 1,070 jurisdictions · 2,755,215 connections
Editorial principles
How we work
01
Plain language, not lawyer speak
Laws are written for lawyers. We translate them for everyone else. Summaries cut through legalese so you understand what is being proposed in minutes, not hours.
02
Every claim has a source
Every data point links back to its public-record source (Sunbiz, VoterFocus, USASpending, FEC). You can always verify what we show you against the original document.
03
No political agenda
We index sources from across the political spectrum and let the data speak. We show connections, not opinions. Factual correlations, not allegations.
04
Open data only
Every data source we use is publicly available government data, not a proprietary database. The same public records any citizen has the right to access, in one place.
Support the work
Believe in the cause?
POLISCOPE runs on contributions, not advertising. Collecting the public record, connecting it, and keeping it online costs money. If you think this should exist, help it exist.
Where to next
Start exploring
Pick any topic, bill, or politician to see the connections.