How BallotFly works

The rules

  1. No recommendation, ever. Not for measures, not for candidates. The assistant refuses "how should I vote" and says why.
  2. Receipts. Every factual sentence carries a numbered source you can open inline. Every item is labeled Verified (two or more independent sources agree), Single source or Unverified.
  3. Symmetry. Every candidate in a race gets the same template, the same depth and the same source bar. Arguments for and against are attributed.
  4. Official first. Secretary of State, county registrar and legislative analyst, then Ballotpedia and Wikipedia (which cite certified results), then named journalism. Advocacy groups may confirm mechanics, never characterize them.
  5. Plain English. What happens if YES, what happens if NO, in sentences a 13-year-old can follow.
  6. Photos. A candidate portrait is either a freely licensed Wikimedia image or the campaign’s own published press photo, credited and linked to the page it came from, and checked against a second source before it is placed. Everyone gets the same size and shape; with no usable photo you see initials.
  7. No party colors. Nothing on this app is red or blue. Parties are words.
  8. Privacy. Your address is used once to find your districts (US Census geocoder) and your full official ballot and polling place (the Voting Information Project, through Google’s Civic Information API), and we never store it. The results stay in your browser until you tap Start over. Your marks live only in your browser. We count page views anonymously, with no cookies and no account, and the count never includes your address or your marks. We never know who you are or how you plan to vote.

How content is built

Research lanes gather each item from primary sources. A verifier re-fetches every source and checks that numbers and names in our text appear in a cited source. A bias lint rejects loaded words and unbalanced arguments. Only then is an item published, with its tier and verification date on the page.

Found an error?

Email ballotfly@dropfly.io with the item and the source that contradicts us. Fixes are logged publicly.

BallotFly is a DropFly project. It is not affiliated with any party, campaign or government.