Document individual calculations for a candidate

[adborden]

Walk through each candidate-related calculation to document:

• What is being calculated?
• What data is needed for the calculation?
• What FPPC forms do the data come from?
• Any caveats or information missing form the calculation or not covered by the calculation? e.g. corner cases

[r-i-c-h]

(<~~Not the CF Nerd) @adborden - How does this differ from what you already put together in the campaign-finance-wiki repo? Perhaps could be incorporated?

[adborden]

On Wed, 2019-01-16 at 19:57 -0800, Rich Werden [email protected] wrote:

(<~~Not the CF Nerd) @adborden - How does this differ from what you already put together in the campaign-finance-wiki repo? Perhaps could be incorporated?

Currently, the individual calculations are not documented anywhere. I think that part of this story would be to document them in the campaign-finance-wiki. Is that what you're asking?

-- Aaron D Borden Human and Hacker

[r-i-c-h]

I hope it's clear that I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just trying to get clarification on where "Project Documentation" needs in this repo end, and where the other "wiki" repo begins...

[adborden]

On Fri, 2019-01-18 at 12:41 -0800, Rich Werden [email protected] wrote:

I hope it's clear that I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just trying to get clarification on where "Project Documentation" needs in this repo end, and where the other "wiki" repo begins...

I see, yes, it will be a little ambiguous and we will have to figure it out as we go. There is definitely some overlap.

My goal for the wiki is to provide a playbook for how campaign finance works in California. If you were in some other California city, you should be able to come to this wiki and understand what forms exist, who files the form, where do the forms get filed, how do I make sense of the forms, what information would I need to aggregate the forms in order to get the same kinds of information that already exists on a site like Open Disclosure (it doesn't have to be 1-to-1, but that would be a great target to aim for).

Does this make sense so far?

So for this story, I see it as taking the individual calculations for candidates and writing them out in plain-English. Start at the result and work your backwards until you get to the individual forms. For example, it might look like this completely fictional example:

To calculate a candidate's total monetary contributions from the beginning of the year to date:

1. Identify the filing dates for your jurisdiction.
2. Take the most recent Form 460s filed by the candidate (using their Filer Id).
3. Remove any filings that have been amended (see box 6 on F460A).
4. Remove any "transfer" contributions. These contributions will also appear in F460D.
5. Sum the amounts in the AmountA column on the F460A.
6. Find all Form 497s by this Filer Id.
7. Remove any filings that have been amended (see box 8 on F497A).
8. Sum the amounts in the Tran_Amt column.
9. Sum result from step 5 with step 8.

I'm sure as we get into it, we'll find this format doesn't make any sense, but we won't really know what it should be until we start trying it.

-- Aaron D Borden Human and Hacker

[ckingbailey]

related to issue #185