Our Editorial Standard

How We Decide What's a Fact

Every Claim Your Voter Power Fact Brief passes specific tests. Here is a summary — and then as much depth as you care to read.

A Fact Brief reports only what is measurable and checkable — a percentage, a dollar figure, what a statute actually says, what an audit actually found. Every such claim carries a named source and a live link. We do not confirm numbers from memory.

We work from primary documents wherever we can get them — the agency table, the court opinion, the audit itself. Some figures exist only as a research organization's tabulation of underlying data. When we rely on one, we name that organization in the source line, so you can see whose arithmetic you are trusting.

Each brief carries a verified date — the day we last opened every link in it and confirmed the source still states the number we cite. That date is the promise. It is per-brief, not site-wide, because different briefs are re-checked on different schedules.

The one test: not “is it balanced?” — balance can launder a talking point. The only question we ask of any sentence is: can a normal person check it against the source, and does the source say exactly that? If the answer is no, it doesn’t go in.

What counts as a fact

Facts, never assertions

The line we hold is between things that can be measured and things that cannot. A number in a government report can be checked. A claim about someone’s motive, intent, or priorities cannot — and attributing it to a source does not change that. So inferences do not appear in a brief, even when a credible source says it, and even when leaving it out makes a brief look one-sided. Chasing “balance” by adding an unverifiable claim to offset another one is how talking points get laundered into fact sheets. We don’t do it.

1
Facts not assertions. Percentages, dollars, what a law says. Motive, intent, and prediction are political claims — out, even when sourced.
2
Verifiable and sourced. Every claim traces to an authoritative source, primary wherever one is readable. Each link is opened and confirmed to state the cited number, and the brief’s verified date tells you when that was last done.
3
Up to date. We prefer the newest data and state the data year plainly, so we don’t dress up an old figure as a current one.
4
Plain language. Written so a normal, non-technical reader understands — and helping to pull apart and define the terms that misinformation often blurs.
5
Aimed at real confusion. Each fact answers a specific misleading claim people actually encounter, with the checkable number that cuts through it.
6
Chosen for reliability, not viewpoint. A source’s political label is irrelevant. We use government data, nonpartisan researchers, and think tanks across the spectrum — for their facts, never their framing.
7
Honest about weak spots. If a source hedges, we carry the hedge into the brief. Tidying a caveat away would make a number look firmer than its own author claims.

The trap we watch for

A real number, measured the wrong way

Most errors we catch are not false numbers. They are real numbers compared to the wrong thing — a legal cap read as an average, one state’s audit presented as a national finding, a name on a voter roll counted as a vote. These slip past casual reading, so we check every figure against a fixed list of mismatches before it ships.

Some of the pairs we check:

Roll entries vs. ballots cast
People arrested vs. people held in detention
Gross debt vs. debt held by the public
A category’s share of spending vs. its dollar amount
An actual result vs. a projection
One year vs. a ten-year total or average
A legal maximum vs. a measured average
A peak vs. the current level
A single-jurisdiction finding vs. a national claim

How each brief is built

The process, start to finish

The same eight steps produce every brief — so you can trust what’s on the page, and check it yourself.

1
Identify an issue that voters actually care and are concerned about – where facts may help them be more knowledgeable and competent voters.
2
Humans set the questions and the scope, redirect the research as fact patterns emerge, and verify every source. Three or more AI tools assist with searching, organizing and drafting.
3
Research the issue independently of any one source, using primary documents and the most up-to-date data.
4
Cross-check for accuracy and fairness.
5
Write it plainly and concisely.
6
Verify that every factual claim is backed by a directly relevant, credible source.
7
Present the facts on contested points; note where credible sources disagree.
8
Use sources across the political spectrum, chosen for reliability — not for the conclusions they reach.

Check us yourself

The whole point of a Fact Brief is that you don’t have to take our word for it. Every brief is built to be audited by a reader:

1
Every figure carries a bracketed number — [3] — and that number is itself a link. Tap it and you go straight to the source document. The same source appears again in the numbered Sources section with its full citation, so you can get there either way.
2
Every entry in the Sources section is a live link to the original document. Open it and read the source in more detail yourself.
3
The Sources section shows a “verified” date — the day we last opened every link and confirmed it still says what we cite. Different briefs carry different dates, because we re-check them on different schedules.
4
If you ever find a claim that doesn’t match its source, tell us. We’ll correct it.

For newsletters, partners, and educators

Fact Briefs are free to print, copy, host, and distribute — unaltered, with attribution (CC BY-ND 4.0). Quote any figure with a citation. The “unaltered” clause is the only real condition: it keeps a changed number from circulating under our name. If you want to translate a brief or adapt it, just ask.

See the Fact Briefs Collaborate with us

Prepared for educational purposes from publicly available sources believed reliable at the time of publication. A ClaimYourVoterPower.org resource. This page describes the editorial standard behind every Fact Brief. · ClaimYourVoterPower.org · 8/14/26