Methodology: how we source
Source hierarchy
- Federal government sources — vote.gov, usa.gov, eac.gov, fvap.gov, cisa.gov.
- State election authorities — Secretaries of State, state election boards and commissions.
- Nonpartisan non-government organizations — e.g. NASS, NCSL, League of Women Voters, Ballotpedia — always labeled as non-government.
We do not cite campaigns, parties, PACs, or advocacy organizations. Where a rule varies by state, we link to the state's official page instead of asserting the rule ourselves.
Directory data
The state directory lists each state's official election authority and website. For the ten most populous states we also link verified registration and mail-ballot pages; for the rest we link the stable official election homepage only, because deep links change frequently. Each entry shows when it was last checked.
Guides
Learn guides are original, describe procedures generically, avoid asserting state-specific specifics, and end with a "verify with official sources" section.
Automated research feed
The Research feed is generated by an automated pipeline that tracks election-administration news: new state voting laws taking effect, registration deadline changes, election security developments, and court rulings affecting voting procedures. Every task issued to the pipeline carries a hard instruction: strictly non-partisan; report procedural and administrative facts only; cite official or major-wire sources; no candidate or party advocacy. Output that fails citation checks is quarantined and never published; a deny-list lets us pull any entry from the feed immediately.
Corrections
Election information goes stale. If you find an error, an outdated deadline reference, or a broken official link, please contact us — corrections are prioritized over all other work.