Editorial standards

The public compact

WomanVoters helps people understand how to vote, what public offices can change, and how policy decisions affect women and families. Our voting instructions use official election sources and do not favor a party or candidate. Our commentary supports broad access to the ballot, bodily autonomy, equal opportunity, accountable government, and representative democracy. Commentary is clearly labeled and never changes the voting information we provide.

Content labels

Every page carries a visible label at the top.

• Civic guide. Practical factual routing to official systems.
• Official links. A curated directory of government destinations.
• Data. Transparent analysis of an official dataset, with methods and limits.
• Explainer. Sourced education about a process or a policy.
• Perspective. Analysis with a visible values lens.
• Editorial. This publication making an argument.
• Historical. Past-cycle or archival material.
• Trust. Pages about how this publication works.

We also use two status labels on individual facts: a review-due caution, and a withheld state when verification is overdue.

Source hierarchy

1. State and local election authorities for registration, deadlines, identification, polling places, ballots, results, and certification.
2. Federal voter-information authorities including Vote.gov, the Election Assistance Commission, USAGov, the association of state chief election officials, the Federal Voting Assistance Program, and the Department of Justice.
3. Specialized official records including the Federal Election Commission, Congress.gov, House and Senate vote records, Census data, and the National Archives.
4. Secondary and advocacy sources, used only when they add analysis unavailable in the primary record, always labeled, and never allowed to override a statute, a court order, an official election page, or an official roll call.

Social media is never the sole source for a deadline, a result, a rule, or an allegation.

Candidate treatment

• Every candidate in a race receives the same fields, the same source requirements, and the same treatment.
• A stated position and an official voting record are shown separately.
• Not responding is recorded as not responding, and it is not treated as a position.
• We do not infer a position from party membership, and we do not infer identity from a name, a photograph, a voice, or a district.
• A campaign website is evidence of what a campaign says, not evidence that the statement is true.
• We do not publish a numeric women-friendly score for any candidate.
• Candidate pages remain unindexed until coverage is comparably complete across the field.

The endorsement boundary

We do not endorse candidates. If an endorsement program is ever introduced, it will use a separate template with published criteria, disclosed funding, disclosed conflicts, and the evidence behind each decision, and it will follow election counsel review first.

Artificial intelligence policy

• No model output is published as an election fact without a person verifying it against the primary source.
• No automated process may create or update voting rules, candidate information, dates, results, or legal conclusions.
• We publish no synthetic imagery of a real candidate, election official, polling place, ballot, protest, or claimed event.
• Illustrative artwork, where used, is labeled as illustration.
• Automation may check whether a link still works and open an internal task. It may not publish.

Conflicts and independence

We are independent of candidates, campaigns, parties, and ballot committees, and we do not coordinate content or distribution with them. Support payments, if they are ever enabled, buy nothing: no coverage, no influence on conclusions, and no access. The placement for AbortionProcedure.com is editorial: no money moves in either direction for it, and no support collected on this site funds it.

Language rules we hold ourselves to

• Lead with the action or the answer.
• Use explicit dates and name the time zone for any time.
• Reserve the word official for an external authority or record, never for this site.
• Present the strongest serious counterargument to any editorial claim.
• Say what remains uncertain instead of writing false confidence.
• Never fabricate an author, a credential, a newsroom, a survey, an interview, or a quotation.