Trust should be inspectable

Evidence first

We prefer primary material: official bill text, roll calls, court filings, budgets, audits, transcripts, datasets, contracts, campaign finance records, and direct interviews. Major factual claims should link to or clearly identify the source whenever publication and source safety allow.

Where our data comes from

Our reporting is drafted from official records, not from other outlets’ coverage. Every record reaches this newsroom through OurElected, which is the only system that contacts a records provider; the newsroom itself never queries a legislature, a clerk, or a data vendor directly. Records are stored exactly as they were served, alongside the content hash taken when they were captured, and cannot be edited afterwards — an audit has to be able to check a story against what the newsroom actually received rather than against a summary of it.

The drafting model has no ability to search the web, fetch a page, or run code. The stored record bundle is the entire body of material a draft may be written from, which is why an article’s source list is also the complete list of what produced it.

Federal legislation and floor action

Bills, actions, and status changes in Congress come from Congress.gov, the legislative branch’s own publishing system. Federal legislative records are works of the United States government and are not subject to domestic copyright.

State legislation

State bills, state roll calls, and governor signings and vetoes are sourced from LegiScan, whose data is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). That licence requires visible attribution wherever the material appears, so each LegiScan-derived record carries its attribution in the source list of the article that cites it, and the database refuses to store one without it — attribution is a condition of keeping the record at all, not a step at publication time that could be forgotten.

Local government

City and county matters come from the Legistar legislative-management systems that municipal clerks publish, under the terms each jurisdiction sets for its own records.

What is running today

Five of our eleven desks have a complete records pipeline behind them today: Federal Bills + Actions, Federal Roll Calls, Nominations & Confirmations, Amendments, and Treaties.

Committee Actions is partly automated. Some official-record story types on that desk are drawn from the record automatically; the rest still require reporting and human editorial review before anything is published.

State Bills, State Roll Calls, and Executive Orders are paused. We are not publishing new automated reporting on those desks at the moment; anything already published there remains available, and the desk front says the same.

Governor Signings / Vetoes and Local Matters are not producing automated reporting yet: the ingestion those desks depend on is still being built, and each desk front says so plainly rather than filling itself with placeholder stories. The sources named above are the ones those desks will draw on when they open.

Accuracy, context, and labels

Speed does not excuse a false or misleading account. Headlines and summaries must be supported by the underlying reporting. A headline should begin the inquiry, not end it. It points a reader at the record rather than standing in for it. News, analysis, opinion, sponsored material, and advertising must be distinguishable to a reasonable reader.

Corrections and updates

Material errors are corrected promptly and transparently. A correction explains what was wrong and what changed; substantial updates are dated. Quiet copy edits that do not change meaning may be made without a note. See the corrections log.

Independence and conflicts

Coverage decisions belong to the publication. Advertisers, vendors, political campaigns, parties, candidates, and advocacy groups do not receive favorable treatment or prepublication review. Relevant financial or personal conflicts should be disclosed with the work.

Automation and artificial intelligence

Automation may assist with research, transcription, classification, or drafting, but a person remains accountable for publication. Generated language must be checked against source material. We do not invent quotations, sources, events, images, or missing facts, and we label materially synthetic editorial media.

Advertising rules

Ads must remain recognizable as ads and cannot imitate navigation or editorial content. We do not ask readers to click ads, place ads where accidental clicks are likely, or serve ads on account, form, private, unfinished, or otherwise low-value screens. Editorial staff do not promise coverage in exchange for advertising or payment.