THE PROMISE IN THE FOOTER
The Covenant
≈ 6 min read · or listen, or skim the bold lines
“We bring facts, tools, and people together. Every decision stays where it belongs: with you.” That sentence sits at the bottom of every page on this site. This page is what it means in practice.
What the site does
- Brings facts: the interview record, verified candidate and precinct data, official links only, and summaries in our words that always link to the source so you can check us.
- Brings tools: the Guided Candidate Comparison, private marks and Ballot Notes, lessons, games, and the lenses — ways to weigh, never verdicts.
- Brings people together: forms to ask candidates questions, anonymous surveys about priorities and ideas, and a place to suggest what the civic center builds next.
What the site will never do
- Never score, rank, rate, or recommend a candidate. A ✓ means a subject came up on the record — never how well.
- Never tell you how to vote — on candidates or on the referendum. No straw polls on live ballot questions.
- Never see your marks. Reactions, checks, notes, your team, your Ballot Notes — saved only on your device. No accounts, no uploads.
- Never publish an individual voice. What you choose to send through a form is read by volunteers and published only as collective, anonymous findings.
- Never state as fact what is contested. Claims are labeled as claims, findings as findings; not-yet-interviewed is a scheduling fact, not a judgment.
- Never invent a number. Every count on this site traces to something you can check.
If we break it
Tell us — the corrections form exists for exactly this. A civic site earns trust by fixing itself in the open.
The house rules — how we operate
The covenant is the promise; these are the working rules that keep it:
- Claims are not findings. What’s alleged and what’s established are always labeled apart, and both sides’ positions appear in their own words.
- Everything traceable. Candidate content links the recorded interview; law content links the official source; case studies name their reporting. If you can’t check us, we shouldn’t have said it.
- No individual voices published. Community submissions appear only as collective, anonymous findings — never one person’s message.
- Absence is never a mark. A candidate not yet interviewed, a topic not yet covered — scheduling facts, not judgments.
- Corrections are a feature. Every page has a way to tell us we’re wrong, and being corrected in public is how this stays trustworthy. See how this site was made, including its AI disclosure.
- Your data barely exists. Marks stay on your device; forms send only what you typed. The whole picture, plainly: your marks & your words.
The fine print, plainly
- Independent, volunteer-built, in progress. Not affiliated with any candidate, campaign, or government office. Pages are still being written, checked, and linked — some are marked Draft while that happens. If something looks unfinished or wrong, it probably is: corrections are welcome and they matter. Confused by something? Tell us — it’s how this place improves.
- Education, not advice. Nothing here is legal, financial, or medical advice. For anything that matters to your case or your rights, verify with the official source or real counsel — the resources page lists both.
- Verify election details with the Navajo Election Administration — dates, precincts, and rules are theirs to state.
- External links are doors, not endorsements. What’s behind them is theirs.
- Share freely. This site exists to be used: share pages, quote lessons, bring the questions to forums — with a link back so people can check the source, which is the whole point.
Whose data is this? The community’s.
The Diné principle of data sovereignty — that what a community shares belongs to that community — is built into this place, not bolted on:
- What you share here belongs to the community. Every count we collect is gathered from the Nation, published back to the Nation, for its benefit — never sold, never handed to outside institutions, never used for anything but the findings you can read here.
- No one is studied. Nothing here is a research study: no names, no accounts, no tracking of any person. Answers are anonymous and publish only as combined counts, reviewed and dated.
- Your own marks never leave your phone. Reactions, notes, saves, and Ballot Notes stay on your device — invisible even to this site.
- We answer to the Nation’s rules. We respect the Navajo Nation’s authority over research and data on the Nation, and we are reaching out to the appropriate offices to confirm this project’s community-feedback tools sit rightly within them. If the Nation asks us to adjust how anything is collected or published, we will.
What we vote on here — and what we never do
Here, the community votes on:
- Ideas & solutions — which approaches speak to you
- Priorities — what matters most, what to chase first
- Questions — which gets asked next, who gets interviewed
- Missions — which one activates
- The site itself — is this tool useful, what needs fixing
Here, we never vote on:
- Candidates — no polls, rankings, or scores on people; the record speaks, you decide privately
- Live ballot questions — no straw polls on the referendum; your vote belongs in the voting booth
- People — no ratings of officials or named institutions; patterns get counted, people don’t
How we mark what we know
Every fact on this site sits at one of four levels, and the marking tells you which. How will we know something is true? This is how:
- ✓ Verified — a primary source (the law itself, the official document, the recorded interview) or two independent sources — linked and dated. Only verified facts state themselves plainly.
- ◑ Single-sourced — one source so far; stated with its source named, second source wanted.
- ○ Draft — written but not yet verified; marked “draft — under review,” and always an open invitation to help.
- — Not found — we looked and nothing is published. Recorded as exactly that, dated — absence is a finding.
And community submissions carry a label — always. Nothing from a form publishes bare. Every published submission is one of three things, and says which:
- Vetted — a volunteer checked it; the proof (the source link, the date, what was checked) publishes with it.
- Unvetted — community voice — shared as what someone said, not as established fact; labeled so a reader can weigh it accordingly.
- Just a question — no claim at all; it goes on the open questions board awaiting its answer.
Goes with: How this site was made · Coffeehouse Rules · Who’s behind this?
Why this covenant is necessary: The Seams in the Law — where Navajo law is published, where it is not, and why no one can promise you the current law.