Frequently asked questions

How to vote in a U.S. federal election: first, confirm you're registered with your state. The federal one-stop is vote.gov (operated by the U.S. General Services Administration), which links to every state's registration portal and voter-information page. Your state's Secretary of State website is the authoritative source for polling places, ballot-by-mail rules, and primary-election dates. The Candidate doesn't run registration ourselves; we link out to the primary records so you can confirm everything against the agency that actually administers your ballot.

The next federal general election is Tuesday, November 3, 2026 — the 2026 midterm elections, when every U.S. House seat and the Class 2 third of the U.S. Senate are on the ballot. Presidential elections run on a separate four-year cycle; the next is in November 2028. Primary dates vary by state — check your state Secretary of State for primary dates and filing deadlines.

The Candidate is a non-partisan public directory of every federal candidate running for President, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House. We pull sourced data from the FEC and other public records, label provenance on every fact, and let candidates claim their pages to add stated positions on top of the sourced facts.

No. We are independent and non-partisan, and we do not endorse any party, ideology, or candidate. Payment never changes independently sourced facts, baseline coverage, factual-correction priority, citability score, rank, or placement. Optional paid sections may appear only after operator review, with visible labeling and machine-readable provenance.

Yes. Reading candidate and race pages is free with no account required, and claiming a candidate page remains free. Campaigns can also buy optional, operator-reviewed profile enhancement tiers (Verified profile, Enriched profile, Visibility tooling); payment never changes sourced public-record facts or skips review. See how paid content and enhancements work.

Federal candidate filings come from the FEC. Some additional context (party labels, district shapes) comes from other public sources. Every fact on a candidate page is labeled with its source and the date we last verified it. See the methodology page for the full contract.

The FEC publishes new filings continuously; we refresh our copy of the data on a regular cadence and surface the most recent verification timestamp on each candidate page. Public HTML is currently generated dynamically and served with a private, no-cache, no-store policy. We do not promise a CDN cache window. Public API caching remains a separate contract.

Use our corrections form and include the candidate name, the field you think is wrong, and the public source we should re-check. We re-verify against the upstream source and update the page when warranted.

Choose Claim this page — free on the candidate page. Claiming and ownership review do not require payment. Optional paid enhancements use a separate button and never change independently sourced facts, rank, or placement.

Our target is 1–3 business days after complete ownership evidence is received. We may ask for additional verification, such as an email from the campaign domain, before approving.

An authorized federal candidate or campaign can request free inclusion with an FEC candidate ID. No payment is required; accepted requests join the next scheduled FEC ingest. Request free inclusion. Paid create-listing may publish the same rechecked FEC registry facts sooner, after the FEC recheck and applicable payment and operator-review gates. Payment never changes independently sourced facts, baseline coverage, factual-correction priority, citability score, rank, or placement.

There is no charge before Stripe Checkout. We provide a full refund if the claim or enhancement is rejected, or if the buyer cancels before publication. A paid order is held unpublished if a required claim approval or final FEC recheck fails; the full-refund and manual-processing terms apply. Eligible refunds are processed manually within 5 business days of the rejection decision or cancellation request. After publication, the Terms remedy applies unless the purchased service was not delivered. A refund removes paid content and the paid-tier badge. An independently sourced FEC registry-fact skeleton persists when one was published. An authorized federal candidate or campaign can request free inclusion with an FEC candidate ID. No payment is required; accepted requests join the next scheduled FEC ingest. Paid create-listing may publish the same rechecked FEC registry facts sooner, after the FEC recheck and applicable payment and operator-review gates. Payment never changes independently sourced facts, baseline coverage, factual-correction priority, citability score, rank, or placement. Policy version 2026-07-31.commercial.v1. Read the commercial policy.

No. Sourced facts (party, district, FEC ID, etc.) come from public records and stay sourced. Candidate-stated content is shown in its own clearly labeled panel so visitors can see exactly which facts came from where.

No. See our privacy policy for the full list of what we collect and how we use it. Short version: we use your email only to send you what you asked for, and we do not sell personal information to third parties.

No. Public candidate, race, and state pages are readable without an account. An account is only needed for things like claiming a candidate page or accessing the dashboard.