Why PoliTracker exists

A right which the Constitution seems to protect without guaranteeing - yes it’s confusing

The text of The U.S. Constitution contains no expressly affirmative grant of the right to vote — which might get a little off-putting…

While it leaves voter qualifications to the states (Article I, Section 2; Article II, Section 1) The Seventeenth Amendment forbids denying the vote on particular grounds: race, color or previous condition of servitude (Fifteenth Amendment), sex (Nineteenth), failure to pay a poll tax in federal elections (Twenty-fourth; poll taxes in state elections were struck down under the Equal Protection Clause in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 1966), and age for citizens eighteen or older (Twenty-sixth).

The Supreme Court has so far treated voting by qualified citizens as a fundamental right: "the Constitution of the United States protects the right of all qualified citizens to vote, in state as well as in federal elections" (Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 1964). As they have also been candid about the gap, in Bush v. Gore (531 U.S. 98, 104, 2000) the Court wrote that "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election," while in the next breath saying once the state does so, "the right to vote as the legislature has prescribed is fundamental; and one source of its fundamental nature lies in the equal weight accorded to each vote and the equal dignity owed to each voter." — bet they made it confusing…

Essentially it states that while The U.S. Constitution and related amendments don’t specifically require adherence to them, states who fail to provide all eligible people with the access to vote have a reduced number of seats available to them during said election. Section 2 of the 14th Amendment is a bit clearer by saying that "the right to vote" is not guaranteed but it IS a condition to trigger a penalty.

We think the right should be treated as inalienable on a federal level – and want to empower current potential and active voters to be more informed on the issues affecting them on a community, state and federal level and participate in the polls.

What "vote legally" means to us

Empowerment within the law: knowing whether you are eligible, how to register, where and when to vote, as well as what the people on your ballot have actually done and which policies are being voted on.

We link to your state's official registration and lookup tools; we avoid voter files or other privileged information, and don’t color anything by party.

Consent of the governed

The Declaration of Independence rests the government's legitimacy on the consent of its governed people. A government that binds people who cannot vote, rules by something other than consent.

• Preservative of all other rights: In 1886 the Supreme Court called voting "a fundamental political right, because it preserves all other rights" (Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 370). Speech, worship, property and due process are only as safe as the ability to replace those who threaten them.
• Equal dignity: One person -> one vote (Reynolds v. Sims), democratic processes is a place in public life where the elite and the rest of us SHOULD count exactly the same.
• Accountability: The vote is the mechanism that turns promises made into promises kept, and with which we hold our representatives and elected officials accountable. This site aims to somewhat measure the overall effectiveness of candidates based on their adherence to campaign promises, voting history, community engagement, and policy impact with evidence attached.
• Shared human standard: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes everyone's right to take part in government through genuine periodic elections by universal and equal suffrage (Article 21), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States ratified in 1992, does the same (Article 25).

How we keep our scores accurate

(well, as accurate as possible)

• Every score traces to archived sources and is approved by policy and political experts.
• Our methodologies for calculating our score are public and versioned, free for you to test on your end (methodology github repo is currently in progress).
• Anyone can submit a correction, and every published correction is listed on the corrections page with politicians' offices having the ability to reply and ask for a review.
• We are not open to advertisers, data sales, third-party trackers or any other monetary endeavors for this app (it is entirely volunteer run - we might accept donations in the future).

PoliTracker is not affiliated with any party, campaign, PAC, corporation, nonprofit, religion, university, government body or any political think tank. For the time being our members will remain anonymous.