Frequently Asked Questions

No. Ballot Builder never requires an account, login, or email address. You can use the app completely anonymously.

All of your personal data — your Civic Blueprint, assessment responses, and demographic information — is stored exclusively in your browser's localStorage on your own device. None of it is ever sent to or stored on our servers.

No. We do not collect, store, or share any personally identifiable information (PII). Your values and responses never leave your device. We have no server-side user storage at all.

You can delete all of your Ballot Builder data at any time by clearing your browser's local storage. You can also use the "Start Over" option on the home page to reset your profile. Once cleared, the data is permanently gone — we have no copy of it anywhere.

The Civic Blueprint Assessment is a 5-minute quiz covering 15 policy topics across five areas: Economy, Healthcare, Housing, Justice, and Climate. For each topic, you choose from concrete policy positions — not vague labels like "liberal" or "conservative." You also tell us how much each topic matters to you, so the system weights your recommendations accordingly.

Every candidate on your ballot is independently scored on the same 15 policy topics you answered. Scores come from public records — voting histories, interest-group ratings (like the League of Conservation Voters, NRA, or Chamber of Commerce), campaign websites, and interviews. When a candidate's voting record contradicts their stated positions, we go with the record and flag the discrepancy.

For each candidate, we compare your positions to theirs across every relevant policy topic. Topics you said matter more count more in the match. The result is a percentage: 85% means you and the candidate agree on most of the things you care about; 40% means you disagree on more than you agree. No AI or subjective judgment is involved in the matching step — it is a deterministic mathematical calculation.

Each ballot measure is analyzed for which policy topics it affects and in what direction. We compare the measure's effects against your positions on those topics. If the measure pushes policy in the direction you prefer on the topics you care about, we recommend YES. If it pushes away from your positions, we recommend NO. If it is genuinely close, we tell you and show the breakdown.

Ballot Builder covers upcoming local, state, and federal elections based on your location. We use your geographic location to look up the specific races and ballot measures that will appear on your ballot.

You can retake the Civic Blueprint Assessment whenever your priorities change, or at the start of each new election cycle. Your policy positions tend to be relatively stable over time, so you may not need to retake it frequently. However, if you feel your priorities have shifted, retaking the assessment will give you more accurate recommendations.

The alignment score is a mathematical measure of how closely your stated policy positions match a candidate's documented positions on the topics you said matter to you. A higher score means greater agreement on the issues you care about. It is not an endorsement — it is a starting point for your research, not a final answer.

If your browser's geolocation is unavailable or you decline the location prompt, you can manually enter your street address. This information is used only to look up your ballot and is stored locally on your device, never on our servers.