First principles · Values for America
Six principles that every feature, prompt and design decision is checked against.
These are the commitments that keep the work credible to readers of every party and tied to the text of the Constitution.
Principle 01
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Anyone exercising public power, whether elected, appointed, or employed by a government body, acts in the public trust. Their votes, disclosures and official actions are public information. We gather that information from official sources and present it in plain English so any citizen can read it.
Constitutional basis
The First Amendment protects the freedom of the press and the right to petition the government. Both depend on citizens being able to see what their government does.
Principle 02
The citizen is the reader we serve.
Not a party, not a donor, not an institution. Every score, every page and every design choice is meant to help an individual citizen understand the record and decide for themselves.
Why this matters
Civic tools that serve two masters tend to end up serving one. No advertising. No party affiliation. No sale of personal data. Funders who ask for editorial influence will be refused.
Principle 03
Popularity is not legitimacy.
A policy most people support can still be unconstitutional, and a convenient government action can still violate individual rights. Majority support is never treated as enough to justify restricting a right. Community votes and constitutional analysis are always shown separately and never merged.
Constitutional basis
The Bill of Rights has no vote threshold. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments reserve unenumerated rights and powers to the states and the people.
Principle 04
Accountable power is named power.
Accountability without specifics is just noise. Every record we publish is tied to a named official, a specific action, a specific source document, and, where we analyze it, a specific provision of the Constitution.
How this shapes the work
No anonymous aggregates. Not "the administration did X" without saying who signed it. Not "Congress voted on Y" without the roll call. The specificity of the record is what makes it useful to every side.
Principle 05
The platform informs. People decide.
SI drafts and analyzes, and labels its work as SI-generated. Readers judge it against the sources we link. Nothing is sent to an official on a citizen's behalf without that citizen choosing to send it.
Enforced in the database
An action packet cannot be recorded as attested unless all three attestation checkboxes are confirmed, and a referral to the Justice Department additionally requires an attorney's attestation. Both are database constraints. Delivery of action packets is not live yet.
Principle 06
Power belongs as close to the people as it can work.
All else being equal, our constitutional grading favors solutions that keep decisions closer to the individual, the community and the state over solutions that move them to a more distant authority.
This follows the structure of the Constitution itself, which grants the federal government enumerated powers and reserves the rest to the states and the people under the Tenth Amendment. It applies the same way whichever party proposes the change.
The four-question test
The decentralization check in the constitutional grade asks:
- 01 — Could an individual or family handle this without government involvement?
- 02 — Could a local community or county handle this without state involvement?
- 03 — Could a state handle this without federal involvement?
- 04 — Does this action consolidate decision-making at a higher level than the minimum necessary?
This is one of five checks in the constitutional grade, alongside enumerated powers, the Bill of Rights, individual liberty, and due process. See the methodology.
How we use these
Principles come before features.
If a feature would be useful but conflicts with a principle, it does not ship. If funding or a partnership would require softening a principle, we decline it. When we fall short, we say so and correct it in public.