Source and publication policy

Methodology

This is an independent community election-information project. It does not rank or recommend candidates and does not tell residents whom to vote for.

How candidate information is published

Candidate-sensitive information follows one of two closed publication paths. Exact source-bound statements may be displayed only after deterministic policy eligibility and the applicable configuration-specific publication gate. Interpretive claims require human final approval. Exact extracts and approved claim wording are displayed as stored, without free paraphrase or combining separate units into a new conclusion.

Candidate-provided assertions are visibly labeled as candidate-provided. They are not presented as independently verified facts unless separate reviewed evidence supports that classification.

Public issue slots are capped at two current units per candidate and issue. Selection uses source tier, source date, publication-unit kind only as an exact tie-break, and a stable final tie-break. It does not rank political importance or candidate credibility. Tier A automatic publication is not currently enabled by this implementation.

Source categories

• Official public record: an official public source.
• Candidate-provided source: candidate or campaign primary material.
• Independent reporting: reporting independent of a candidate or campaign.

Election logistics and standalone links

Election dates, voting methods, and ward information are manually reviewed against the listed official City of Pickering sources. The verification date and official handoff links are displayed with the information. The application does not fill missing logistics from model memory or runtime web search.

A candidate or official source appears as a standalone profile link only after the source itself passes review and a human reviewer explicitly classifies that link for standalone publication. Changed, unavailable, withdrawn, wrongly attributed, or awaiting-review sources fail closed.

Corrections

Public correction submissions are untrusted until a human reviewer triages them. Candidates and campaigns use the same channel and gain no extra authority. Request text is never copied automatically into a trusted correction, candidate claim, evidence record, publication hold, or public correction entry.

The public substantive correction log has a separate human publication approval. It uses deterministic neutral descriptions and does not expose requester contact details or text, internal summaries or resolution notes, reviewer identities, audit data, internal IDs, or unpublished allegations.

Missing or conflicting evidence

Missing eligible information is not negative evidence. Where no eligible publication is available, the service abstains and uses a neutral sparse-evidence message. Conflicting information is identified as disputed or unresolved; it is not silently converted into a definitive conclusion.

Independence and funding

Independent community election-information project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the City of Pickering, any candidate or campaign, political organization, or commercial sponsor. Candidate-provided information is identified as such and is reviewed under the same evidence rules applied to all candidates.

The service has no commercial, candidate, campaign, or political-organization sponsorship. Normal public browsing requires no account and no generative-AI request.