Skip to main content

Politicians

This area is the doctrine. The rosters and the awards each have their own areas; what is here governs all of them.

Rule 1 — it is an award, never a score

Everything this product publishes about a politician is an award, or the absence of one. A person is either given an award, a percentage of one, or nothing at all.

"The movement gave this voting record a 71% Monkey Award" is a statement about a record, computed by a published equation, that the subject can check line by line.

"This person is a 71" is a grade on a human being. The product does not say it, and the language on every page holds that line — a page reads Awards for, never Scores for; a record with no computed number reads No award yet, never Not yet scored.

Rule 2 — the wall

The in-office voting record — votes, authorship, and instruments blocked from advancing — is the only thing that feeds the Monkey and Llama awards.

Everything else the movement knows about somebody — interviews, transcripts, background, resume, education, public statements, qualification assessments — never bubbles up into those. It feeds the Flamingo.

The wall runs both directions and is enforced in the build, not remembered.

A person can hold both kinds at once, and both render side by side: an award percentage on one side, a flamingo state on the other. Neither contaminates the other.

Rule 3 — an absence is never a finding

The Flamingo's gray-brown state means we have not assessed this person. It must never be rendered as, sorted as, or collapsed into we assessed them and found nothing good.

The four rosters

  • Elected politicians — 1,300+ with voting records
  • Good new leaders — people worth electing who have not held office
  • Worrisome challengers — flagged as a risk, under the heaviest sourcing burden on the site
  • My politicians — your own seats, resolved from your address

Pages in this area

Where to go next