TruthMark does not score politicians

TruthMark's architecture is directory + deep-link per Berkeley Protocol Principle 1. We don't score subjects because:

• Scoring is editorial.Which votes count, which weight, what counts as “pro-child” or “anti-child” — these are advocacy choices. Honest scoring means owning those choices on a clearly editorial product.
• Mixing scoring into a directory dilutes both.A user looking up their senator's campaign finance reports shouldn't encounter a TruthMark-authored grade alongside the FEC link — that puts our voice on equal footing with the authoritative source.
• The scoring product belongs on its own site.An editorial scorecard with explicit advocacy framing — its own About page, its own methodology doc, its own funder model — is a legitimate sister product. It just isn't this site.

Five third-party scorecards covering federal Members of Congress and state-level officials. Each has a different framing — some openly advocacy-driven, one nonpartisan-aggregator, one neutral- encyclopedic. Read the framing note before relying on the score.

• First Focus Campaign for Children — Legislative Scorecard

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  First Focus Campaign for Children (501(c)(4))

  Points-based scorecard rating every member of Congress on bills First Focus identifies as child-welfare-relevant in each Congress. Hosts the 'Champions and Defenders of Children' designations.

  FramingChild-advocacy framing — explicitly advocates for federal funding and policy expansions in CHIP, child nutrition, education, foster care, juvenile justice, and child tax credit.

• Children's Defense Fund Action Council — Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard

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  Children's Defense Fund Action Council (501(c)(4))

  Letter-grade (A-F) scorecard of every Member of Congress based on votes on bills CDF identifies as affecting children.

  FramingChild-welfare advocacy framing. CDF Action Council is the lobbying arm of the Children's Defense Fund and weights votes by their own assessment of each bill's significance for children.

• Vote Smart — Voting Records

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  Project Vote Smart (501(c)(3))

  Aggregates dozens of third-party interest-group ratings (NRA, ACLU, Sierra Club, Chamber of Commerce, Planned Parenthood, etc.) per legislator. Itself nonpartisan; aggregates partisan and nonpartisan groups side-by-side.

  FramingAggregator of other organizations' scorecards. Useful for seeing how a legislator scores across a wide range of advocacy groups — not a TruthMark-style directory.

• FollowTheMoney.org — National Institute on Money in Politics

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  Institute on Money in State Politics (NIMSP)

  Free state-level campaign-finance database covering all 50 states' candidate, party, and PAC contributions. The primary source for state-level money-in-politics data; covers judicial campaigns in 38 states with elected judges.

  FramingNonpartisan data project. Reports raw filings from state boards of elections without editorial scoring. The closest equivalent to the FEC's federal-level dataset for state and local races.

• Ballotpedia — Politician Profiles

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  Ballotpedia (501(c)(3))

  Neutral encyclopedia of U.S. elections. Per-politician profiles include biography, terms served, electoral history, committee assignments, sponsored legislation, and notable votes — without editorial scoring.

  FramingNeutral / encyclopedic. No advocacy framing; describes voting records and stated positions rather than rating them. Useful as a starting reference for any office-holder or candidate.

• Read the methodology before reading the score. Each scorecard above lists the bills it weighted and (usually) why. A score without methodology is a horoscope.
• Cross-check across scorecards with different framings.An A-grade from one advocacy organization and an F-grade from another with opposing priorities is normal — it tells you the legislator is consistently aligned with the first and consistently opposed to the second. That's information.
• Verify the underlying votes on Congress.gov or GovTrack. If a score depends on a specific vote, look up that vote yourself. The roll-call record is authoritative; any scorecard summary is interpretation.
• Don't mistake a scorecard for a verdict.A score is one organization's assessment by one set of criteria. It is not a finding of fact about whether the legislator is a good or bad person.