How the RESOLUTE Citizen Scorecard Works
Every candidate is scored on a rubric built for the office they actually hold. Three rubrics, each 100 points, each 10 categories of 5 questions (2 points per "True"). Federal officials are weighted 60 God First / 40 America First. State and local officials are weighted 70 God First / 30 State (or Local) First — because the lower the office, the narrower its national-issue scope, so a leader's faithfulness to Christ is proportionally more of what their record reveals. The weighting is the editorial weapon: it doesn't just measure positions, it measures whom a candidate puts first.
The God First Weighting 60/40 federal · 70/30 state & local
Every Christian voter scorecard ever built treats every issue as equal. We don't. The Bible doesn't. Mark 12:30 — love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength first. Matthew 6:33 — seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be added. Country is downstream of conviction. The scorecard makes that loud and visible.
A representative who scores 56 God First / 8 second-pillar is doing a different thing than one who scores 12 God First / 38. The two-subtotal headline tells voters which kind of leader they're actually electing. Old single-number scorecards couldn't show that difference.
Why 70/30 below the federal level. A U.S. senator directly shapes the border, foreign policy, and national sovereignty — so the "America First" pillar earns a full 40%. A state legislator or a county sheriff mostly cannot touch those national levers; what they can do is govern faithfully, refuse unconstitutional overreach from the level above them, and keep public order. So the second pillar shrinks to 30% and the God First pillar grows to 70%. The weighting follows the authority.
Three Rubrics, One Scale Federal · State · Local — v5.0
The first time we scored a city-council member against a U.S. senator's rubric, it broke. A councilor cannot vote on Article I war powers or sponsor a federal abortion ban. So in v5.0 each tier gets its own purpose-built 10-category rubric. Six God First categories are shared by all three tiers (Sanctity of Life, Biblical Marriage, Family & Child Sovereignty, Christian Liberty, Economic Stewardship, Election Integrity). What changes:
- Federal (60/40): God First (those 6) + America First — Border & Immigration, Self-Defense & 2A, Foreign Policy Restraint, Industry Capture & Sovereignty.
- State (70/30): God First (those 6 + Public Justice & Law/Order) + State First — Refuse Federal Overreach (10th-Amendment sovereignty), Border Enforcement, Self-Defense & 2A.
- Local (70/30): God First (those 6 + Public Justice & Law/Order) + Local First — Refuse State Overreach (subsidiarity / local control), Public Safety & Cooperation, Self-Defense & 2A.
Subsidiarity is structural. "Refuse Federal Overreach" (state) and "Refuse State Overreach" (local) measure officials on authority they actually hold — a sheriff can decline an unconstitutional mandate; a school board cannot set foreign policy. Public Justice & Law/Order is the Romans 13 duty of the magistrate to punish evil and protect the innocent — a God First conviction, weighed where state and local officials genuinely decide it. Foreign Policy Restraint and Industry Capture remain federal-only.
Tiered Grading Federal · State · Local · v4.1 → v4.3
The first time we tried to score a city council member against the same rubric as a U.S. senator, it broke. A councilor cannot vote on Article I war powers, cannot order a Pentagon audit, cannot sponsor a federal abortion ban. Marking those questions False by silence treated her like a senator who voted the wrong way, which is editorially dishonest. So we tiered the rubric.
The Boolean spirit of each question is the same across tiers — the question still measures the same conviction. What changes is which questions count and how they're worded for the office a candidate actually holds.
v4.1 — Tier-aware applicability (the N/A mask)
Every one of the 50 questions is tagged with the tiers where it's a fair test of office. A question that only a federal officeholder can vote on (Pentagon audits, Article I war powers, repeal of the National Firearms Act) is automatically marked N/A for state and local officials. N/A answers count toward neither the score nor the dynamic max — they simply shrink the denominator. We retrofitted 61,859 cells across the database on the v4.1 rollout (May 17, 2026). A city councilor's "out of 22" is calibrated to the 22 questions her chair actually decides, not the 50 a senator faces.
Applicable counts at the current snapshot: federal = 50 / 50, state = 43 / 50, local = 22 / 50.
v4.2 / v4.3 — Tier-specific question text
For the questions that do apply at multiple tiers but require different evidence at each, the rubric stores parallel wording. The federal version asks "Has the candidate voted for the Article I war-powers requirement before any U.S. military action?" — the state version asks "Has the candidate voted for state legislative authorization before National Guard deployment?" — the local version asks "Has the city council adopted resolutions opposing U.S. military intervention without congressional authorization?" Same conviction. Different chair. Different evidence base.
The result is that the headline "0 / 10 on Foreign Policy Restraint" means the same restraint conviction at any tier, but a state senator gets graded on the votes she actually had and a city councilor gets graded on the resolutions her body actually considered. We do not require people to vote on bills they cannot vote on.
What stays universal
- 10 categories per tier — each rubric is 10 categories of 5 questions = 100 points. Six God First categories are shared by all three tiers; the rest are tier-specific (see "Three Rubrics" above).
- God First leads every tier — 60% federal, 70% state & local. The God First pillar is always the larger share; the weighting follows the office's authority.
- 0–100 scale — every official displays on the same /100 visual whether they answer 50, 43, or 22 questions, so a senator and a school-board member are comparable at a glance. Each rubric is labeled so you know which one a candidate was scored on.
- Dynamic-max grading — the letter grade is the percentage of your denominator (2 × answered questions), not a flat 100. A candidate scored on 38 of 43 applicable questions caps at 76; if she earned 76 True, that's 100% A. See the rankings page for the full dynamic-max explainer.
- Foreign-lobby adjustment — AIPAC + CCP penalties apply to federal officials; the Soros axis also reaches local prosecutors (rogue-DA funding). Applied wherever donor evidence exists.
- Evidence-first — voting records, sponsored bills, on-camera statements, official sites. Silence on an issue your office decides is still scored as failure.
Why this matters editorially
Most scorecards either skip down-ballot officials or grade them on the same federal questions and let everyone score zero. The first option means voters have no signal for the offices closest to their daily life. The second option produces a uniform F that's useless for distinguishing the school-board candidate fighting CRT from the one introducing it. The tiered rubric lets every elected office below the federal level be graded on the conviction questions their actual chair decides, which is the only honest way to grade them. The Boolean still binds the moral spirit; the implementation shows the chair.
✝ God First 60 pts · 6 categories × 10
The six categories that flow from loving God first.
Sanctity of Life
10 pts- Affirms life begins at conception and personhood from conception
- Has voted for or actively advocates abortion abolition (not merely restrictions)
- Opposes embryonic stem-cell research, IVF embryo discard, and chimeric experimentation
- Opposes euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and quality-of-life rationing
- Has never accepted Planned Parenthood, NARAL, EMILY's List, or abortion-industry PAC funding
Biblical Marriage
10 pts- Affirms marriage as exclusively the lifelong union of one man and one woman as instituted by God
- Opposes all forms of same-sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships in law
- Rejects transgender ideology and affirms biological sex (male/female) as immutable and God-given
- Supports no-fault divorce reform and policies that strengthen the marriage covenant
- Opposes promotion of LGBTQ+ identity in public policy, schools, military, and corporate-government partnerships
Family & Child Sovereignty
10 pts- Supports universal school choice, homeschool freedom, and opposes compulsory public-school attendance
- Supports parental notification and consent on all medical, mental-health, and gender-related interventions for minors
- Opposes CRT, SOGI, "comprehensive sex ed," and gender-ideology curricula in K-12 public schools
- Supports age-verification on pornographic content and criminal penalties for sexualized content marketed to minors
- Supports faith-based adoption/foster agencies and opposes placement of children with same-sex couples
Christian Liberty
10 pts- Affirms the right to publicly profess Christ in all spheres (workplace, military, public office, schools)
- Supports conscience exemptions for Christian medical professionals, business owners, adoption agencies, and educators
- Opposes compelled speech against Christian conviction (pronoun mandates, gospel-proclamation hate-speech laws)
- Supports public-square Christian symbols, prayer in public bodies, and Sabbath/Sunday closure protections
- Opposes state-funded promotion of non-Christian religious displays, curricula, or holidays in public institutions
Economic Stewardship
10 pts- Opposes a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and supports cash and decentralized crypto as legal tender
- Supports sound-money policies including gold/silver as constitutional money and audit/abolition of the Federal Reserve
- Opposes deficit spending and supports a balanced-budget constitutional amendment
- Supports usury limits, anti-debt-slavery protections, and tithe-friendly tax structures
- Opposes WEF/ESG/Davos economic capture and supports anti-trust action against monopolistic financial cartels
Election Integrity
10 pts- Supports hand-counted paper ballots and opposes electronic voting machines
- Supports photo voter ID with citizenship verification
- Supports single-day in-person voting with absentee only for verified medical/military exceptions
- Opposes mass mail-in voting, drop boxes, and ballot harvesting
- Opposes private election funding ("Zuckerbucks") and foreign-government election interference
🇺🇸 America First 40 pts · 4 categories × 10
The four categories that flow from putting our nation second only to God.
Border & Immigration
10 pts- Supports completed physical border barrier and active military border presence
- Supports mandatory deportation of all illegal aliens, including those who entered as minors
- Opposes sanctuary city/state policies and supports federal preemption against them
- Supports mandatory E-Verify for all employment and benefit eligibility
- Opposes birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens, tourist births, and opposes foreign ownership of U.S. farmland
Self-Defense & 2A
10 pts- Supports constitutional carry without permit requirements
- Opposes red-flag laws, magazine limits, "assault weapons" bans, and gun registries
- Supports repeal of the National Firearms Act (NFA), Gun Control Act (GCA), and other federal gun regulations
- Supports castle doctrine and stand-your-ground laws with full civil immunity for lawful defense
- Opposes ATF overreach, citizen disarmament initiatives, and U.N. small-arms treaty participation
Foreign Policy Restraint
10 pts- Supports Article I congressional war-powers requirement before any U.S. military action
- Supports immediate withdrawal from forever wars and repeal of standing AUMFs
- Opposes foreign aid to nations hostile to U.S. interests or actively persecuting Christians
- Has never accepted donations from foreign-backed lobbies (e.g., AIPAC) or foreign-linked PACs
- Opposes U.S. participation in WHO, U.N. governance overreach, NATO expansion, and supranational governance
Industry Capture & Sovereignty
10 pts- Opposes pharmaceutical mandates of any kind (COVID, childhood, employer-required) and supports informed consent
- Supports repeal of pharma liability shields (1986 NCVIA, PREP Act) and restoration of tort accountability
- Opposes Big Ag consolidation (Bayer/Monsanto/Cargill) and supports anti-trust action against agricultural cartels
- Supports raw-milk freedom, small-farm protections, and opposes USDA / EPA overreach against family farms
- Supports defense-contractor accountability, completion of Pentagon audits, and ending revolving-door appointments
Letter Grades Old-school report card
Each candidate's total score gets a letter grade. Same scale as the schoolwork that shaped your judgment of effort.
| Grade | Range | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| A | 90 – 100 | Resolute. Acts and votes consistent with biblical conviction across nearly every category. Vote with confidence; expect them to fight when others fold. |
| B | 80 – 89 | Strong. Some weak areas but the core is sound. Verify the weak categories before any high-stakes vote. |
| C | 70 – 79 | Mixed. Establishment lane: strong where the party demands, silent where it costs. Watch for drift under pressure. |
| D | 60 – 69 | Compromised. Multiple core failures. Likely takes establishment money and votes the way the lobbies want. |
| F | 0 – 59 | Failing. Hostile to most of what we score. A Christian household has no business voting for them under any "lesser of two evils" framing. |
Two Rules That Govern Every Score
Rejection of Neutrality
If a candidate frames the state as "neutral," "multi-faith," or "inclusive," that is a confession of refusal to acknowledge Christ's Lordship. Ranked as failure. There is no middle ground on abortion. There is no "moderate" position on whether marriage is between a man and a woman. Candidates don't get credit for being politely silent. Silence is a position — and we score it accordingly.
Evidence-First
We don't focus on party platforms, PAC endorsements, or campaign promises. We use voting records, official statements, sponsored bills, campaign websites, social media posts, and live debate or council-meeting footage. If a candidate says they're pro-life but voted to expand abortion access, the vote is what we count. Every scored candidate has source links on their profile page so you can verify it yourself.
A purely performative position — e.g., using "Judeo-Christian" rhetoric to avoid naming Christ Jesus — is ranked as failure.
How We Know Evidence & confidence
A score is only as good as what it's built on, so we're honest about the foundation behind every candidate. Evidence-reviewed answers carry a source link you can click; records still on the party-typical baseline wear an amber "not yet individually reviewed" banner so you're never misled. And the cardinal rule: when our research finds no public position on a question, we leave it blank — it neither helps nor hurts the score — rather than invent one to fill the gap.
| Confidence | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Evidence-reviewed federal · state · local | Individually researched against the primary record — roll-call votes, sponsored bills, official statements, issue-group ratings, and the candidate's own words — with a source link on every scored answer. The gold standard: trust it, and verify with the links. |
| Roster-verified | We've confirmed the person holds (or is genuinely running for) the seat, but found no public policy positions yet — usually a brand-new official or a low-profile newcomer. Scored on nothing we couldn't document; it fills in as a record accumulates. |
| Party-default (archetype) | Scaffolding — seeded from a party-typical voting pattern so the seat isn't blank, and clearly flagged as not yet individually reviewed. These are the records still in line for evidence review. See a documented error? Use the dispute form on the profile. |
Candidates Without a Voting Record
Challengers and first-time candidates have never cast a vote — but they're not unscoreable. We read what they tell the public themselves: their campaign-site issues page, their Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, candidate questionnaires, and the endorsements they accept. A Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life or NRA endorsement — or a Planned Parenthood or Human Rights Campaign one — is hard evidence of where someone stands, and we cite it. Vague slogans ("fighting for families," "common sense") are not a position and stay blank. Same rule as always: their own documented words, with the link, or nothing.
We Keep It Current
Candidate fields churn — people drop out, suspend, or lose. When the record shows a candidate has withdrawn or been defeated, we mark it rather than leave a stale "2026 candidate" tag standing. An accurate roster is part of an accurate scorecard.
Foreign-Lobby Penalty Why scores can go below baseline
Documented donations from foreign-backed lobbies (AIPAC chief among them, with China-linked and Soros-network donor vectors also tracked) trigger both a per-category penalty in Foreign Policy Restraint and a total-score adjustment. The adjustment can pull a candidate's headline score down by several points. The methodology page on the .org ministry side documents the bracket schedule, donor sources, and historical context.
This is the single feature that prevents the scorecard from rewarding candidates who say all the right things while taking dual-loyalty money quietly.
Deep Dives — One Page Per Category
Each of the 10 categories has its own page with the full rubric, scored questions, key bills + votes + organizations we track, position-level disqualifiers, and the Scripture anchor for that domain. Every candidate profile page links the category header straight to its deep-dive — click any category title in a profile to land here. The deep-dive shows the federal-tier wording by default; tier variants are documented in the Tiered Grading section above.
Version history
v5.7 — Evidence engine & confidence transparency (June 2026)
Stood up a repeatable evidence-refinement engine and began converting party-default scaffolding into individually-researched, source-cited scores — starting with Fredericksburg and Virginia (the home turf) and expanding outward. Three things shipped with it: published confidence levels (evidence-reviewed / roster-verified / party-default) so a reader can see exactly how much research stands behind any number; a documented social-media protocol for scoring challengers who have no voting record from their own public statements and accepted endorsements; and a candidacy-currency practice that marks dropouts, suspensions, and losses instead of leaving stale candidate tags. The governing rule throughout: no public position found means the question is left blank, never guessed. See the "How We Know" section above.
v5.6 — Per-tier labels & descriptions: visible drill-down (May 23, 2026)
v5.0 made the questions tier-aware, but the visible category labels and descriptions stayed canonical — so a state-rep profile still read "Sanctity of Life" with the same federal-focused description as a U.S. senator's profile. v5.6 fixes the visible drill-down: each of the eight shared God-First / Border / Self-Defense categories (plus Public Justice at state & local) now carries a tier-specific label and description. Federal: canonical. State: "Sanctity of Life — State abortion law & funding" with a state-code-focused description. Local: "Sanctity of Life — Protect the Vulnerable" focused on DA priorities, zoning, crisis-pregnancy support. Profile pages render the right one based on office tier. Category deep-dive pages swap H1 + description on the tier toggle. No re-score required — underlying scoring untouched. Keeps canonical names so cross-tier search and comparison still work.
v5.0 — Three tier-specific rubrics (May 21, 2026)
Formalized the tier system into three purpose-built rubrics. Federal stays 60/40 God First / America First. State and local move to 70/30 God First / State (or Local) First — lower offices have narrower national scope, so faithfulness weighs heavier. Added three categories: Public Justice & Law/Order (Romans 13, God First at state & local), Refuse Federal Overreach (State First), and Refuse State Overreach (Local First) — encoding subsidiarity, measuring officials on authority they actually hold. Self-Defense & 2A moved to the Government pillar; Election Integrity stays God First; Foreign Policy Restraint and Industry Capture are federal-only. Migration was non-destructive: shared category scores carried over, new categories backfill over time.
v4.3 — Local-tier question variants (May 18, 2026)
Added local-tier display text for 22 questions so city council, mayor, school-board, and sheriff candidates get rubric wording that matches what their chair actually decides. Boolean unchanged.
v4.2 — State-tier question variants (May 18, 2026)
Added state-tier display text for 39 questions. A state senator's "Article I war powers" line now reads "state legislative authorization for National Guard deployment." A state legislator's federal-only questions remain N/A.
v4.1 — Tier-aware N/A masking (May 17, 2026)
Tagged every one of the 50 questions with the tiers where it's a fair test of office. Retrofitted 61,859 cells across the database: state officials get 43-of-50 applicable, local officials 22-of-50, federal officials remain 50-of-50. Dynamic-max grading shrinks the denominator instead of penalizing officials for questions outside their chair's authority.
v4.0 — God First / America First (May 2026)
The previous rubric was 7 categories × 5 questions × 2 pts = 70 points. v4.0 added three categories — Economic Stewardship, Industry Capture & Sovereignty, and the elevation of Election Integrity from a sub-question to a full category — and reorganized the existing seven into the God First / America First two-tier structure. PCH/CBG was retired as a label and its substance absorbed into Family & Child Sovereignty + Christian Liberty.
Result: the scorecard now catches gaps the old rubric masked. Specifically — establishment Republicans who score well on culture-war questions but take Pharma + defense-contractor + Big Ag money quietly. The new categories exist precisely to surface that pattern.