Political claims, checked against the public record

Political ads and stump speeches make claims that can be checked. A candidate says an opponent voted to raise taxes. An ad says a law will close rural hospitals. Our job is to find the vote or the text and report what it shows.

We sort each claim into three buckets: what the record establishes, what's a matter of interpretation, and what nobody can know yet. We identify who made the claim and whether the evidence comes from an independent source or a partisan one. We don't assign motives the evidence doesn't show, and we don't grade politicians.

Expect coverage of campaign advertising, voting records, public statements and the way statistics get framed. When a number appears, we say what population and time period it covers. Coming up: the most common mistakes people make when reading a voting record, and how to get started checking a claim yourself.