Paper Trail Politics Visit the main site

A guided tour of Paper Trail Politics

An IMDb for politics.

Welcome to my idea for a connected guide to government. Instead of connecting movies, actors, and studios, Paper Trail Politics connects places, offices, elections, candidates, organizations, and the money behind campaigns.

Explore the idea

The idea behind the project

Three questions.
One connected picture.

I started Paper Trail Politics because I wanted to answer three questions.

I also wanted to answer these questions in a visual way that would make it easier for people to explore and understand their government. This site captures and organizes various sources of data and information into a single page for users to examine. Every location in the U.S., every political office, election, candidate, entity, and organization can have its own page.

By linking these pages to each other, it becomes easier to 'surf' around and see how various aspects of our government interact with each other in ways not easily seen before.

Currently, I have two locations that I'm ready to share to help illustrate this layout: Riverside, California, and Toledo, Ohio.

A network of connected pages Locations, offices, elections, candidates, entities, and organizations each have their own page. Lines connect the pages, with pulses traveling in both directions to illustrate their relationships. Locations Offices Elections Candidates Entities Organizations

Explore the Government Atlas

Who runs my local government?

One of the first things I wanted to know is who represents me in government. While many of us recognize the names and faces of people in the news, we may not know who serves on our local school board, who our state representatives are, or which judges preside over our local courts.

To make government easier to understand, Paper Trail Politics provides a “Government Atlas” that lets you visually explore political offices throughout the U.S.

All U.S. states and counties are currently available in the atlas. In the two locations featured here, Riverside and Toledo, coverage extends to the precinct level in certain areas.

Riverside, California

From the United States to Riverside Ward 2 A wordless map animation zooms into California, then Riverside County, Riverside city, and City Council Ward 2. The selected area is highlighted in gold at each level.

Toledo, Ohio

From the United States to Toledo City Council District 3 A wordless map animation zooms into Ohio, then Lucas County, Toledo, and City Council District 3. The selected area is highlighted in gold at each level.

Find your precinct. Explore your ballot.

What am I voting for?

How many times have you walked into a polling place and been presented with a race you hadn't even heard of before? Or perhaps you thought you were going to vote for one candidate, only to find out you live just over the line in another area?

If you know which precinct you live in, you can see which races you get to vote on. Historically, each precinct had its own polling place, but with cutbacks and early voting, many precincts are now grouped together, making it even more confusing to find out what you're voting on.

Paper Trail Politics has a precinct finder on the “Find My Area” page that tells you which precinct you live in. You can drill down on the map or enter your ZIP code and navigate to your home. Once you have an account and select your area, you can keep up with what will be on your next ballot.

On the demo website, I've provided two precincts as examples of how this may work: Precinct 228-806 in Riverside County and Precinct 014D/1 in Toledo.

Woodcrest · Precinct 228-806

From the United States to Precinct 228-806 in Woodcrest A wordless map animation zooms into California, Riverside County, Woodcrest, and Regular Precinct 228-806. The selected area is highlighted in gold at each level.
See Precinct CA 228-806

Toledo · Precinct 014D/1

From the United States to Toledo Precinct 014D/1 A wordless map animation zooms into Ohio, Lucas County, Toledo, and Precinct 014D/1 using its saved official base precinct boundary. The selected area is highlighted in gold at each level.
See Precinct OH 014D/1

Compare the issues. Follow the money.

Who is funding a candidate’s campaign?

The final questions I wanted to know is who is donating to each candidate? I've found that by comparing who is giving money to whom, you can quickly see the real extent and reach of power in government. I've provided a few examples below of money in politics and how it compares at the local scale, and the federal level.

The same idea, applied to ballot measures

What is the proposal?
Who is behind it?

Finally, I often want to have an unbiased (as possible) understanding of ballot measures such as state-level propositions, local measures, tax levies, or other up or down votes.

To help show how Paper Trail Politics can help sort through these issues, I've provided two examples of tricky propositions in CA this year: Prop 38 and Prop 44. Explore these pages to better understand the pros and cons of each vote based on official records.

Immunology researcher Ruchi Srivastava working in a UC Irvine laboratory in February 2021Leonard Ortiz / Orange County Register via Getty Images

Authorizes Bonds for Immunology Medical Research. Initiative Statute.

Explore Proposition 38 Illustration of a nurse helping a patient at a community clinicIllustrative clinic image

Requires Community Health Clinics Spend 90% of Revenue on Program Services. Initiative Statute.

Explore Proposition 44

What's Next?

Bringing Paper Trail Politics to a larger audience involves two main tracks:

  1. Gathering the facts. This means collecting information from public websites, such as when a candidate was elected, who their opponents were, and how much they won by.
  2. Building the framework. This means creating the infrastructure and page layouts that organize those facts and make them easy to explore.

Gathering information for a few local elections is manageable, but the scope grows quickly nationwide. My current estimate is that each state page needs about 5,000 individual facts. Across 50 states, that's roughly 250,000 facts just for those pages.

The work expands even further at the local level. In California alone, there are more than 15,000 elected officials, from U.S. senators to special district water board members. Collecting and organizing information at that scale is a major undertaking, and AI tools help make it feasible for a small team.

However, I'm concerned that the cost of AI tools could double over the next 12 to 18 months, so I'm focusing on gathering as much data as I can now. I had hoped to finish before the election, but I now expect this phase to take at least a few more months. After that, we'll roll out the more detailed website in areas that can help support the project.

For now, I'll keep working on the framework while the data is collected. Please explore the site with the understanding that it's a work in progress, and feel free to suggest improvements.

Thanks for visiting!

- Marc McClain