How to Turn Public Records into a Usable Candidate Dossier

A usable candidate dossier is a file a second person can open without calling the researcher. Public records become that file when each one is tied to one person, one office, and one source. A folder of PDFs is not there yet. This how-to is the short pass from records to that file. The longer build order is /blog/how-to-build-a-citation-backed-candidate-research-dossier. The field manual is The Complete Guide to Evidence-Backed Opposition Research for Campaigns at /blog/the-complete-guide-to-evidence-backed-opposition-research-for-campaigns.

Before a line from the dossier reaches a memo, use /blog/how-to-verify-political-claims-before-they-reach-a-campaign-memo. Which records exist depends on the office, mapped at /blog/9-types-of-race-specific-research-campaign-teams-need. Whether the container is a sheet or the platform is /blog/campaign-research-platform-vs-spreadsheets-which-workflow-holds-up.

Lock the person before you attach an exhibit

Write the legal name, the office, the jurisdiction, and the cycle on the first page. Add a middle name, a city, or a filing identifier when someone else shares the surname. The opposition-research page anchors that block to a Secretary of State filing or an FEC committee name, because a ballot name and a committee name are often different strings. The methodology page deduplicates on legal name, jurisdiction, office, and filing identifiers, with a reliability score when two sources disagree. Show which identifier won. A record that matches only the surname stays in the question log.

Office changes which exhibits can exist. The nine homepage families, from House through Judicial, are mapped at /blog/9-types-of-race-specific-research-campaign-teams-need. A federal candidate's money is often in FEC filings. A mayor's filing is often at the city or county. A legislator's vote record exists only if they have served. Attach the exhibit to the office on the first page, not to a template that assumes every candidate has every section.

Give each form its own section

The working file includes votes where a voting record exists, public statements stored as the words that were said, campaign finance filings, financial disclosures, donor lines taken from those filings, and court records that match the person. FEC filings and a personal financial disclosure are different forms. Amended finance reports replace earlier totals, so cite the report that is current. A state or local candidate may never appear in an FEC report. Leave a section empty when the person has no record of that type.

A quote is the words that were said, with the date and the place. A newspaper summary is someone else's description, and the file should label it that way. A donor line documents a reported gift. It does not document a private promise. A court record belongs when it matches the identity block. Independent expenditures and Super PAC reports are part of the methodology page's FEC intake, and they are different committees from the candidate's own campaign committee. Cite the committee the sentence names.

Attach a source to every line that will leave the desk

On a published briefing, each claim carries a source URL and a source type. Named types include an FEC filing, a Secretary of State portal, a court record, an official campaign site, and a government press release. The methodology page names citation_validation_status: whether the cited document still exists at that URL and still contains the cited language. A claim that fails stays out until the source is re-resolved. Where the record only opens a question, use the published posture language: may, could, would examine, and appears consistent with.

The methodology page says records begin as public sources: FEC filings, Secretary of State candidate filings from 47 states, and county registrations from four county adapters in production. Ingestion runs on a schedule because filings change and committees terminate. Blog briefings regenerate hourly. Candidate research records refresh daily. A dossier that cannot show which version was read will not survive the next filing deadline. An unsourced social post can start a question. It becomes a claim when a public record answers it. Anonymous tips stay outside the pipeline.

Hand the same shape to a second person

Order the pages so someone else can audit them. Identity first. Then votes, statements, finance, disclosures, donor lines, and matching court records. A receipt for a published finding, as the public facts page describes it, includes the claim, a source link, a capture timestamp, a content hash, and supersession history. A paper dossier can follow that shape: the sentence, the URL, the date read, and a note when a later amendment replaces it. The homepage review step names analyst, senior, legal, and communications. Export names receipts, citations, and watermarking.

A spreadsheet holds this shape when the columns are the file standard: legal name, office title, jurisdiction, cycle, filing identifier, source URL, source type, the date read, and an amendment note. A cell that says the line is ready is a label a person typed. It matches the methodology page's citation validation only when someone has opened the document and the file shows that result. The comparison of those containers is /blog/campaign-research-platform-vs-spreadsheets-which-workflow-holds-up.

Run the same build on your own candidate. The opposition-research page calls that the mirror file. Research books are prepared per candidate, and the page says profile access is priced per month, per profile. The page also says it is legal advice for no one. Recording conversations, entering a system that is not public, and using personal data that a statute treats differently from a campaign filing stay with the campaign's counsel. The canonical coverage sentence dated 2026-10-03 is 24,000 profiles in the public candidate-research index. The homepage counter on 2026-10-05 read 24,130. Those figures describe the index. They are not a count of finished dossiers.