MCP OpenFEC Server

The MCP OpenFEC server bridges AI assistants with the U.S. Federal Election Commission’s public data through the OpenFEC API. It solves a common pain point for developers and researchers who need to query real‑time campaign finance information without building custom API wrappers or handling authentication. By exposing a rich set of tools over the Model Context Protocol, it allows assistants like Claude to retrieve candidate profiles, committee filings, contribution histories, and audit findings on demand, enabling sophisticated political analysis or compliance checks directly within conversational workflows.

The server offers a comprehensive suite of tools that map closely to the OpenFEC API endpoints. Developers can search for candidates by name, state, or office; pull detailed candidate and committee information; retrieve individual contributions and independent expenditures; and access electioneering communications, party‑coordinated spending, and corporate union costs. Bulk data links are also available for large‑scale analyses. Each tool returns structured JSON, making it trivial to feed results into downstream processing or visualisation pipelines.

Key capabilities include rate‑limit compliance (1,000 requests per hour) to honour OpenFEC policy, secure API key handling via environment variables, and a straightforward MCP configuration that integrates seamlessly with Claude Desktop. The server’s modular design means new OpenFEC endpoints can be added quickly, and the tool list is extensible without changing client logic. Because it operates over MCP, any assistant that supports the protocol can invoke these tools without custom SDKs.

Real‑world use cases span political journalism, campaign strategy, compliance monitoring, and academic research. A journalist can ask an assistant to list all contributions over $5,000 for a specific candidate and receive a ready‑to‑publish table. A campaign team might track independent expenditures in real time to adjust messaging, while a regulator could audit committee filings automatically. The ability to download bulk datasets also supports machine‑learning models that train on historical finance data.

In summary, MCP OpenFEC provides a turnkey, protocol‑driven gateway to election finance data. It empowers developers and analysts to embed authoritative political information into AI workflows, eliminating the overhead of API integration while ensuring data freshness and compliance with OpenFEC’s usage limits.