Open Data
Everything the movement asserts lives in a public git repository you can clone.
Not an API you query at our discretion. Not a database we describe to you. Flat, readable files — mostly YAML — that you download in full, read in any text editor, and re-derive our conclusions from yourself.
Why it is built this way
A movement whose entire argument is institutions withhold the record and then dare you to prove anything cannot itself be an institution that withholds its record. If our data were only visible through our website, you would have to trust our website. This way you do not have to trust anything.
It also means the movement survives us. If this organisation is captured, discredited, or simply stops existing, the record is already on other people's machines.
What is in it
| problems | what is wrong, with root causes broken out |
| laws | problem laws, fix bills, good laws |
| politicians | 1,300+ legacy records, 65+ new leaders, worrisome challengers |
| qualifications | sixteen rubrics, hundreds of graded criteria |
| scores | the action catalog, the scoring policy, the award lists |
| communities, geo, positions | scoping, district maps, position records |
| provenance | where every downloaded thing came from |
| transcriptions | and a list of the ones still missing |
The one rule everything obeys
No claim about a living person without a source. It is enforced when a record is written, not when it is reviewed, because an uncited claim about a person sitting in an inbox is still an uncited claim about a person.
Pages in this area
- Clone the record — getting the whole public record onto your machine, and how the app uses it.
- The sourcing rule — no claim about a living person without a source, enforced at the door rather than at review.
- Propose a correction — how anybody fixes something wrong, and why a decline has to state its reason.
Where to go next
- Karma — the area before this one.
- AI — the area after this one.
- Take Action — what to actually do with this.