This study examines whether political activism is associated with the accounting measurement intensity (AMI) problem. AMI-intensive firms are characterised by a greater level of discrepancies or deviations between the recorded values of financial transactions and the true economic values they represent according to the mandatory accounting reporting standards. As corporate political activism diverts managerial attention and valuable financial resources from routine to political activities, this study predicts that politically active firms will be characterised by greater AMI. Based on a US sample of 30,928 firm-year observations, this study finds that political activism, measured by lobbying expenditures, has a positive association with AMI. The association is pronounced for the firms receiving Securities and Exchange Commission comment letters in the earlier year. The association is stronger for the firms receiving comment letters consecutively in the last two years. A difference-in-differences estimation technique on the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal is employed to address the potential reverse causality problem. The Random Forest and Extreme Gradient Boosting machine learning algorithms support the baseline results. The results remain robust to other endogeneity tests. The findings could interest policymakers in revisiting the regulatory framework related to corporate political activities due to its potential impact on accounting practices. The findings can also be interesting to auditors requiring rigorous auditing and compliance checks for firms heavily involved in political activities.