Federal Reports: FEC Filings, Schedules and Super PACs

Idaho voters elect two U.S. House members and two senators, plus a president every four years. Those campaigns report to the Federal Election Commission, under federal law, on federal forms. The forms are longer than Idaho's and show more about each donor. Once you learn where things sit, they are easier to work with.

Who files what

Filer	Form	Notes
House or Senate candidate's committee	Form 3	Quarterly in 2026, plus pre-primary, pre-general and post-general reports
PACs, Super PACs and party committees	Form 3X	Monthly or quarterly, by the committee's choice and type
Individuals or groups making independent expenditures without a committee	Form 5	Plus 24- and 48-hour reports
Candidate committees, large late contributions	Form 6, the 48-hour notice	$1,000 or more received less than 20 days but more than 48 hours before the election

Inside a Form 3

A Form 3 starts with a summary page and a detailed summary page, each with two columns: this period, and election cycle to date. Then come the schedules:

• Schedule A: itemized receipts. Individual contributions, PAC contributions, transfers, refunds received. One Schedule A per summary line.
• Schedule B: itemized disbursements. Payee, address, date, amount and purpose.
• Schedule C: loans owed by or to the committee, including candidate loans and guarantees.
• Schedule C-1: loans and lines of credit from banks.
• Schedule D: debts and obligations other than loans, such as unpaid bills to a consultant.

Individual contributions go on Schedule A when a gift exceeds $200 or the donor's gifts add up to more than $200 in the election cycle. Each entry shows the donor's name, mailing address, employer, occupation, election designation (primary or general), date, amount and cycle-to-date total. Employer and occupation are the big difference from Idaho's state reports. They let you see when many people from one company or industry give at once.

The 2026 calendar

For quarterly filers in 2026, the FEC lists: April quarterly due April 15 (books close March 31), July quarterly due July 15, October quarterly due October 15, and the year-end report due January 31, 2027. Candidates in a primary file a pre-primary report 12 days before it, even if unopposed. Candidates in the general file pre-general and post-general reports; the FEC publishes those dates on its pre- and post-general page. Deadlines are not extended for weekends.

Inside the last 20 days before an election, watch for Form 6 48-hour notices: any contribution or loan of $1,000 or more to the candidate, including from the candidate.

Super PACs and independent spending

Super PACs file Form 3X. Their donors appear on Schedule A, often with large amounts, and their independent expenditures appear on Schedule E with the candidate supported or opposed. Two extra reports matter in the fall:

Report	Trigger	Window	Due
48-hour report	Independent expenditures aggregating $10,000 or more for an election	Any time up through the 20th day before the election	By 11:59 p.m. Eastern on the second day after the ad is publicly distributed
24-hour report	Independent expenditures aggregating $1,000 or more for an election	After the 20th day, until 24 hours before the election	By 11:59 p.m. Eastern the day after distribution

Super PAC donors are disclosed. When one of those donors is a nonprofit that does not report its own funders, the trail stops there. Say so plainly, as the previous lesson showed.

Searching FEC.gov and OpenSecrets

FEC.gov lets you look up any candidate or committee, see its filed reports and summary totals, and search itemized individual contributions across all committees by name, city, state, employer, occupation and date. You can download results as spreadsheets, and the FEC publishes bulk data files for larger projects.

Habits that help:

• Search the donor's name several ways (with and without a middle initial, a nickname, a misspelled employer). FEC data is typed by campaigns, and it shows.
• Check whether the amount is a single gift or a cycle-to-date aggregate. Both appear on Schedule A, and they are easy to confuse.
• Look for refunds and redesignations, which show up as negative entries or later entries for the same donor. A gift that looks over the limit may have been fixed.

OpenSecrets is a nonprofit formed in 2021 when the Center for Responsive Politics (federal data) merged with the National Institute on Money in Politics (state data, formerly FollowTheMoney). It groups donors by industry and employer and adds context the FEC does not. Use it to find a pattern. Then confirm every number against the filed FEC report, because OpenSecrets classifies and cleans data, and a classification is a judgment.

The FEC's quorum problem

The FEC needs four of its six commissioners to agree on enforcement, rules, advisory opinions and audits. According to the Congressional Research Service, it lost that quorum on April 30, 2025, and as of March 2, 2026 it had two commissioners. Two nominees, Ashley Stow and Andrew Woodson, were named on February 11, 2026. As of October 2026, the FEC's own leadership page still listed two commissioners and four vacant seats, so the commission had not regained its quorum. Check fec.gov for the current count before you cite it.

For anyone following a federal race: the law, including contribution limits, remains in effect, staff keep working, and the Justice Department can still bring criminal cases. But new enforcement matters cannot move forward without a quorum. So when someone says a campaign "faces FEC action," ask whether the commission can act right now. Accuracy here cuts both ways: no quorum is not a license to break the law, and a complaint filed is not a finding.