Plain-English answers for voters reading these profiles and for candidates who want to know what appears on theirs.
Profile information comes from official records, including nomination filings, campaign finance reports, and candidate statements filed with the City Clerk. We do not publish biographies or position statements written specifically for CivicSummary. A candidate's own account can appear through their official candidate statement. Photos are sourced separately from campaign websites and credited to their recorded sources.
No, and there is nothing to buy. Every candidate certified for the ballot is listed automatically. No candidate can pay for placement, for a larger profile, or to have material removed — charging for visibility would favor well-funded campaigns over grassroots ones, which conflicts with our nonpartisan mission.
Neutrality is built into our design, not just our stated policy. Specifically:
For more detail, see our editorial policy on the About page.
Candidate profile information comes from official public sources:
Candidate photos come from campaign websites, with links to their recorded sources. We do not use campaign website text, news coverage, social media, or editorial commentary to build candidate summaries. Full methodology is on the About page.
“Outside spending supporting” means spending to help elect the named candidate; “outside spending opposing” means spending against their election. These independent expenditures are made without coordinating with the candidate’s campaign and are shown separately from money the campaign raises or spends.
PAC means political action committee, a type of organization. Independent expenditure describes spending, not the organization behind it. PACs can operate at the city level, but outside spending can also come from other groups or individuals. The FPPC’s city general purpose committee category includes PACs, major donor committees and independent expenditure committees. Read the FPPC’s committee definitions.
The Research License unlocks attribution rights to cite itemized campaign-finance data in published work. ARIA, our AI research assistant trained on local election data, is included with the Civic Power User tier and above. All core election information — candidate profiles, the documents behind them, and top-line contribution and expenditure totals — is always free and publicly accessible.
The most important dates for the November 2026 Santa Monica general election:
For the complete schedule including registration deadlines, vote-by-mail dates, and early voting windows, see the Election Calendar. Always verify deadlines with the Santa Monica City Clerk's Office — they are the authoritative source.
Tell us which document is wrong or missing and we will correct the record. Because every statement traces to a filing, a correction means one of three things: we misread a document, we linked the wrong one, or we have not collected a document that exists. All three are ours to fix. Use the contact form with the candidate name and, if you have it, a link to the filing. What we cannot do is add material that has no document behind it, or remove an accurate record because a candidate would prefer it not appear.
Send a message through the contact form and choose the category that fits your question, data correction, or feedback. We will respond within 48 hours. For a correction, include the candidate name and the filing it concerns.
