Montana’s Followthemoney.org Expecting Heavy Traffic After McCutcheon Decision

The McCutcheon v. FEC decision by the Supreme Court this week means that large political donors will be able to spend their money on more candidates. The National Institute on Money in State Politics (Helena, Montana) is an organization that tracks campaign spending across the U.S. and Executive Director Edwin Bender says he expects a lot more people will be looking through his organization’s data.

"Demand for the data we do produce every day will certainly skyrocket," Bender said. "This, along with Citizen's United, are two of the biggest legal decisions to come our way in probably a half century. It means that people who want to understand the effects of the decision, how does it effect donors, how does it effect the candidates, how does it subsequently effect public policy, will be coming to us."

The National Institute on Money in State Politics is preparing for the extra attention.

"We've just rebuilt our data architecture--we redesigned it," Bender said. "We're adding federal data, we've staffed up for the upcoming elections, and I think we're in perfect position to feed those who are interested in having an intelligent debate about the roll of contributions in our society--things like accountability--and what true accountability really is"

Data collected by Bender and his team can be found at followthemoney.org.