Editorial Standards

Sourcing

Candidate positions, financial claims, legal claims, vote totals, polling, and factual assertions about public officials must carry a source citation. We never generate or infer a candidate's position that was not submitted or verified. When evidence is insufficient, we say so directly rather than guessing.

Editorial workflow

Original content moves through a defined workflow: draft, in review, fact check, legal review, approved, scheduled, published, corrected, or archived. Contributors may draft content; only editors may schedule and publish it.

Fact-checking

Claims are rated using descriptive labels — accurate, mostly accurate, missing important context, misleading, unsupported, incorrect, outdated, not verifiable, or opinion/prediction — rather than a single score. A fact-check rating is always approved by a human reviewer.

Campaign participation

Campaign representatives may propose profile updates, complete questionnaires, and submit official responses, but they can never publish directly. Every campaign submission is reviewed by an editor before it appears on the site.

The role of AI

AI may assist with transcription, source extraction, duplicate detection, and drafting research leads. AI may never publish a fact-check conclusion, invent a source, decide whether a candidate is truthful, or generate a candidate policy position. Every AI-assisted factual draft retains links to the source material used and requires human approval before publication.

Corrections

Material factual errors are corrected, not silently edited. See our corrections policy for details.

Sponsors and advertising

Sponsors and advertisers never influence candidate ordering, fact-check ratings, editorial content, or which public questions are selected. See our sponsorship and advertising policy.