Every rating on this site is our opinion. That is not a dodge, it is the point — and an opinion is only worth anything if you can see what it is built on. So here is exactly how a claim gets picked, checked, rated, answered and corrected. If we ever do it differently, this page changes first.
01
Two ways in. We watch a list of people who hold office or are running for it, and we pull what they said from their own transcripts and from outlets we have vetted. And anyone signed in can send us a link. We do not check private citizens, and we do not check jokes, predictions or opinions — only claims about things that already happened or already exist, where a record can settle it.
02
Primary sources first: the bill, the dataset, the transcript, the filing. Then anyone who got there before us, cited by name. If the record is genuinely unclear, we say that instead of picking a rung. Every source we read is listed on the page — not summarized, listed, so you can go and disagree with us.
03
Six rungs. The name is a judgment; the reasoning under it is the argument.
04
A person. Software helps us find claims and drafts a first pass, and that draft goes into a queue where a human either publishes it, changes it, or throws it out. Nothing reaches this site without someone putting their name on it. Machine-written ratings do not publish, ever.
05
Before a determination goes up we tell the person or their office what we are about to publish and give them a window to answer. If they have not answered by the time we publish, the page says so, in those words: pending a response from them or their office. If they answer later, we publish what they send, in their words, on the same page. Answering does not change the rating — it changes what you get to read next to it.
06
We get things wrong. When we do, the correction goes on the page, on top, with the date — and the original stays underneath with a line through it. Nothing is quietly edited and nothing disappears. Every one of them is also listed together on the corrections page, so you can see how often it happens without hunting.
07
Paying does not buy a verdict, a rung, or early sight of one. There are no ads, so nobody is buying anything else either. We do not take a rating down because someone asked nicely, and we do not put one up because someone paid. If you ever catch us doing any of this, the corrections page is where it will end up.
08
Because it is true, and because it matters legally. Calling something an opinion is not a force field — what protects an honest verdict is that the facts behind it are disclosed, which is why the sources are on every page rather than in a footnote. The label on the logo is a joke. The sourcing under it is not.