Our purpose
Smarter.Vote makes public information about candidates easier to compare. Research pages link back to their sources, show uncertainty, and give readers a starting point for their own verification. Smarter.Vote does not endorse candidates or parties.
This site uses AI-generated content
Much of the candidate and election research on Smarter.Vote is drafted, organized, classified, or summarized by artificial intelligence.
This includes candidate summaries, issue-position comparisons, confidence labels, race analysis, and forecasts. Automated research and review systems work from public sources, but source links and automated checks do not guarantee that the resulting text is complete, current, neutral, or correct. Do not assume that every published statement has been individually fact-checked by a human.
Smarter.Vote LLC chooses what systems to use and is responsible for what it publishes. Readers should inspect the cited evidence, compare it with official records and candidate statements, and report errors through the corrections process.
What is available today
Smarter.Vote is an early-stage service operated by Smarter.Vote LLC. Current research focuses on national races. It is not a complete ballot guide and does not yet provide dependable coverage of state legislatures, local offices, judicial races, or ballot measures.
Automated tools assist with research and review, but they can miss context or make mistakes. Readers should check linked sources and official election authorities before acting.
Our methodology
How Smarter.Vote researches, reviews, and presents election information.
How the research is made
Automated research agents search public sources—including candidate statements, campaign websites, official records, voting databases, and reputable reporting—and organize the evidence into candidate summaries, issue positions, background, and race analysis. They are instructed to describe what candidates say and do without endorsing them.
Source links remain attached to the research so readers can inspect the evidence directly. A source is not treated as neutral merely because it is linked: campaign material represents the candidate's own account, while records and reporting provide additional context.
Evidence and confidence
Confidence labels describe the strength of the available evidence—not the value of a candidate or policy. High confidence requires multiple corroborating sources or an official candidate position. Medium confidence requires at least one credible source. Low confidence marks information that is inferred, unverified, or unsupported by a source.
“No public position found” means the research process looked for an attributable position and did not find one. It does not mean the candidate has no view, and it is different from an issue that has not yet been researched.
Automated review and publication
Separate AI models review the full race side by side for the correct candidate roster, internal consistency, source quality, completeness, background accuracy, and neutral treatment across candidates. Automated checks also look for broken sources, malformed polling, placeholders, and missing required research.
The Automated Research Score combines the review models' scores and accounts for unresolved warnings. A failing score or an unresolved error blocks publication. This is automated editorial quality control, not a promise that every statement has been independently fact-checked by a human.
How forecasts work
Race forecasts start with the published race record. They prefer candidate-level polling when it is available and otherwise weigh incumbency, party context, candidate strength, the documented race environment, and other evidence already gathered for the contest. Prediction-market signals may provide additional context, but they are never treated as ground truth.
Each race forecast includes a rating, modeled win probability, key drivers, uncertainty, and supporting sources where the analysis relies on a specific external claim. Chamber forecasts combine those race probabilities with known holdover seats to calculate projected seats, seat-outcome distributions, and the chance of party control. For the 2026 Senate forecast, a 50–50 result is counted as Republican control under the vice president tie-break assumption.
Limits and updates
Sources can be incomplete, positions can change, and automated analysis can misunderstand nuance. Polls capture a period in time, and forecasts change as new evidence arrives. Forecasts are estimates—not election results, voting advice, or guarantees.
Verification and corrections
Use the linked evidence to check research claims, and rely on state and local election officials for registration, deadlines, voting methods, and official results. Report errors through our corrections process. Funding never determines findings, classifications, forecasts, or publication decisions.
Accountability
Smarter.Vote LLC is responsible for the site, its editorial decisions, privacy inquiries, corrections, partnerships, and any future refunds. Learn more about our methodology, corrections policy, and funding and editorial independence policy.
Contact Smarter.Vote LLC at SmarterDotVote@gmail.com.
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