About SaveYourState & our methodology

Our mission

SaveYourState exists to bring bills and laws to the attention of the American people. We give every citizen free, clear, and unbiased information about what their state government is doing, who is behind it, and who is asking for their vote, so they can make up their own minds.

About SaveYourState

Every year, thousands of bills move through America’s 50 state legislatures. They decide your taxes, your schools, your property, your roads, and your rights. But most of that work happens with little attention. Fewer reporters cover statehouses than ever, and most people can’t name the lawmakers who represent them.

SaveYourState was founded by me, Abel Melton, to change that. We pull bills straight from official state sources and explain each one in plain language. Each bill page shows exactly who sponsored and supported it and links to the full official text. We do the same for candidates, so you can see who’s running, what they’ve promised, and what they’ve actually supported.

We don’t tell you what to think. Every party gets the same format and the same neutral wording, and every fact links to its source. Our job is to put the facts in front of you. What you do with them is up to you.

SaveYourState is free and independent. We don’t run ads or sell your data, and we’re not affiliated with any government agency, party, or campaign.

Meet the founder

My name is Abel Melton, and I’m from the great state of Washington. Politics became a passion and a drive for me in 2021. My family was listening to The Charlie Kirk Show when January 6th happened, and that day I realized how important politics really is. One year later, I gave my life to Jesus Christ. It was the greatest decision I have ever made.

What drives me toward the goal of informing the American people about what is happening in their local politics is the Bible. Paul wrote in Romans 10:14–15:

“How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?”

Though this isn’t directly talking about politics, the same concept applies. How can people vote and stand up for what they think is right if they don’t know what their local governments are doing?

So my goal is to get the truth of what is happening in this country to every American. This is a tool that, Lord willing, will help millions of Americans follow what they believe.

— Abel Melton, Founder

Nonpartisan standards

1. Identical treatment. Every bill uses the same template, and every candidate uses the same template with the same fields. If a field is unavailable for one person, it is shown as unavailable rather than omitted.
2. No color-coding by party. All party labels share one neutral style. We do not use red/blue or party symbols.
3. Neutral ordering. People are listed alphabetically by last name; party tallies are listed alphabetically by party name; bills are sorted by date of most recent official action. No state is featured.
4. Neutral wording. We avoid adjectives, characterizations, and predictions of effects. Positions are attributed (“states that…”), never asserted.
5. Official language first. Where legislatures publish a nonpartisan staff summary (for example, California’s Legislative Counsel’s Digest), we reproduce it verbatim and label it.
6. Source on every item. Each record lists its sources and shows when it was last updated and when the last official action occurred.
7. No invented data. Where no source is connected yet, we say so. Demonstration records are clearly marked Example data and use fictional names.

How bill summaries are written

The “plain-language summary” on each bill page is generated by a fixed template using only official structured fields: bill number, chamber, introduction date, official title or description, sponsor names and parties, and the most recent official action. The template contains no evaluative words. Where an official nonpartisan summary exists, it is displayed separately and verbatim.

Any future AI-assisted summaries will be generated only from the official bill text, constrained to neutral descriptive language, labeled as such, and reviewed before publication.

Bill stages

Each state’s procedures differ, so we map official actions to one shared vocabulary: Introduced, In committee, Passed one chamber, Passed both chambers, Enacted, Vetoed, Did not advance. The exact official status text and date are always shown alongside. Nebraska has a one-house (unicameral) legislature, so “Passed both chambers” there means final passage by the Legislature.

Candidates

Federal candidates come from Federal Election Commission filings. Filing with the FEC does not establish ballot qualification. Platform summaries are drawn only from candidates’ own published materials and cited (see below). Candidates’ legislative records are linked by official legislator identifier, never by name matching.

On bill pages, sponsors are linked to officeholder pages by Open States person ID; for Washington and California, whose official feeds do not include those IDs, sponsors are matched on official chamber, district, and last name.

How candidate platform summaries are compiled

• Source. We use the candidate’s own words only. The first source is the candidate’s statement in the official state Voters’ Pamphlet (for Washington, the Secretary of State’s Online Voters’ Guide), because every candidate on the ballot gets the same opportunity to submit one. Where no pamphlet statement exists (for example, most U.S. Senate races), we use the candidate’s own campaign website, their official social posts, or questionnaire answers they wrote for a neutral body such as the League of Women Voters’ Vote411. We never use news articles, opponents, PACs, or third-party summaries, and we only match a source to a candidate when the name, state, and office all match.
• Coverage. Washington state legislative candidates and U.S. Senate candidates with their own published issue statements are compiled first; U.S. House candidates follow. Everyone else shows “Not yet compiled” until we can cite their own materials.
• Same structure for everyone. Each summary has exactly four bullets. Each bullet is attributed (“Says they will…”, “States support for…”, “States opposition to…”) and paraphrases what the candidate wrote (or quotes it briefly), without adjectives or evaluation. Statements about opponents and lists of endorsements are not summarized.
• No guessing. If a candidate has no official statement or campaign website we can cite, the profile says “Not yet compiled.” We do not infer positions from party, news coverage, or third parties.
• Sources and dates. Every point links to the exact page it came from and shows the date that page was accessed. Candidates can request a correction by pointing to their own published materials.
• Legislative records. Current members of Congress are linked to Congress.gov by their official Bioguide ID, matched through their FEC candidate ID (using the public-domain congress-legislators dataset), never by name.

Coverage today: U.S. House candidates on Washington’s November 3, 2026 general election ballot. Other states will follow.

Photos and district maps

• Photo sources. We use only photos we have the right to show: official congressional portraits (public domain U.S. government works, via the unitedstates.github.io project), the photo each candidate submitted to the state’s official Voters’ Guide, and photos on Wikimedia Commons that carry a free license (public domain, CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA or “copyrighted free use”) and that Wikidata lists as that person’s image. Official state legislature portraits are shown only once we have confirmed that state’s reuse terms. We never use photos from campaign websites, news outlets, social media, Ballotpedia, or search engines.
• Right person, every time. A photo is shown only when the person is matched by an ID or by office data, never by a name search: the FEC candidate ID, the congressional Bioguide ID, or, in Wikidata, the same state and office or chamber (and the same district wherever Wikidata records one) held by exactly one person with the same name. Group and event photos are skipped. If anything is uncertain, we show no photo.
• Credit. Every photo shows a “Photo:” line under it. For Wikimedia Commons photos it names the author and the license and links to the file page, as the license requires.
• Same treatment for everyone. Photos are shown at the same small size with no filters or retouching. Whether a photo exists depends only on whether a free or official one exists for that person, never on party. When there is none, everyone gets the same gray silhouette and “No photo available”.
• Websites. A candidate’s website comes from the official Voters’ Guide, the campaign committee’s FEC Statement of Organization, the congressional legislators dataset, Open States, or Wikidata. We list it only if it loads when we check it and the page names the candidate. Otherwise the page says “No website found”, the same for every candidate.
• District maps. Boundaries come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s cartographic boundary files (public domain), simplified for display. Every district is drawn in the same neutral color; we never color districts by party or by election results. Simplified lines are approximate — confirm your district with your county elections office.
• Who is listed. District pages list everyone on the official general election ballot, in ballot order, with party preference exactly as printed on the ballot, plus the current officeholders. Incumbent badges come from the FEC seat status (U.S. House) or from matching the ballot name to the current legislator for the same district and chamber (state legislature).

Coverage today: Washington (10 congressional and 49 legislative districts). Other states will follow.

Election results

Results come directly from official state election feeds (currently the Washington and California Secretaries of State). Candidates are listed in the order the official source publishes them (ballot order), never ranked by vote count. We do not project, call, or characterize races. Before polls close, no numbers are displayed, because pre-election feeds may contain system tests. Each results page shows the source’s “as of” time, when the page last changed, and when the feed was last checked.

Data sources

Washington and California bills come directly from those legislatures. Bills for the other states come from Open States, which collects them from each official legislature website; every bill page links to the official source. State-level candidate lists will be added through a licensed candidate data provider.

How often data is updated

The data is updated regularly. Each update fetches only what changed since the last completed check and rebuilds the site. For the 48 states that come from Open States, every bill is loaded from Open States’ nightly bulk files, and same-day changes are added through its API, which allows this site 250 requests a day (the busiest legislatures are checked first). If an update cannot finish, it resumes next time, and the table above shows it as a partial update rather than a completed check. Each record shows when its content last changed (“Record last updated”) and the date of the latest official action; the time of the most recent data update appears in the footer.

Email alerts

Subscribers choose states and a frequency (as they happen, daily, or weekly). A bill is included as “new” the first time it appears in our data, provided the legislature recorded its introduction within the previous 14 days, so older bills added during data catch-up are never announced as new. Subscribers can also opt in to major status changes (passed a chamber, enacted, vetoed).

Each alert uses the same fixed format for every bill: number, official title, a one-line factual description, sponsors with party exactly as recorded, status, and a link to the bill page. Emails are signed by the site’s founder; the greeting and sign-off are personal, but the bill content contains no opinions. Signup requires email confirmation, and every email has a one-click unsubscribe. See the privacy policy.

Corrections

If you find a factual error, please tell us with a link to the official source. Verified corrections are made promptly and noted on the affected page with the date of the change. Official government sources control in case of any discrepancy.

Email corrections to saveyourstate@gmail.com. Every bill page also has a “Spot an error?” link that fills in the bill number and page address for you. For other questions, see the contact page.