Voter information, sourced from public records

Our mission

Federal elections in the United States are decided by tens of millions of voters choosing between candidates whose records are scattered across dozens of government websites, news archives, and campaign sites. Most of that information is public, but very little of it is organized. The Candidate's mission is to make voter information boring — to give any voter, journalist, or researcher a single place to find every qualifying candidate, every race, and the sourced facts behind them.

We do not endorse candidates, accept payments for placement, or rank candidates by anything other than the public-record fields we display. We treat every qualifying federal candidate the same way regardless of party. Where editorial judgment is unavoidable — for example, when explaining what a piece of legislation does — we follow the neutrality contract described below and cite primary sources.

How we work, in three lines

• Every candidate profile is anchored to an FEC candidate ID and a federal race tuple (office, state, district, cycle).
• Sourced facts and candidate-provided content are clearly labeled and timestamped on every page where they appear.
• Voting records are tied to specific roll-call votes from the official chamber clerks, not third-party scorecards.

For the full version — refresh cadence, source priority, the sourced-vs-candidate- provided contract — read the methodology.

Where the data comes from

Right now the site is built on a small number of authoritative public sources. We add new sources slowly and only after we've confirmed we can keep them refreshed and properly attributed.

• Federal Election Commission. Candidate identities, principal campaign committees, office sought, party labels, and the campaign-finance totals on every profile. See fec.gov/data.
• U.S. House & Senate clerks. Roll-call votes power the issue-position blocks for sitting incumbents. See clerk.house.gov and senate.gov.
• Editorial taxonomy. The 15-issue federal taxonomy that powers /issues is curated in-house under the neutrality contract and cites primary sources in every explainer.
• Candidate-provided content. Anything a verified candidate has submitted about themselves through our claim flow. Always labeled as such, never presented as a sourced fact.

Neutrality policy

Editorial copy on this site avoids advocacy verbs (no “fights for”, “defends”, “cracks down on”) and frames every position as a roll-call vote, a public statement, or a candidate-submitted disclosure. Every non-trivial claim cites a primary source the reader can verify. Candidates are ordered alphabetically or by a mechanical, public field (state, district, cycle) — never by editorial preference. If you find a page that violates this contract, treat it as a bug and tell us below.