How an issue makes the list

The Planks are not anyone's opinion. They're the output of this process. If you think the movement has a hidden agenda, this is the document to check it against. Ask which test is rigged.

Criteria Draft 3, ratified October 16, 2026.

This page states the rules in plain language. The numbers and the rules are the same ones the dossiers and the Report Card apply.

Every Plank must pass all five. No exceptions.

Failing any one test disqualifies a candidate issue, no matter how urgent it feels. If an issue fails a test by a wide margin, the review stops at the first failed test and that test is named. Close calls get the full five-test workup.

1. The Consensus Test

Sustained public support of at least 70% nationally and at least 60% among self-identified members of each major party. That support has to show up in at least three independent pollsters from the Qualifying Pollster List, spanning at least 18 months.

The cross-party floor is the whole point. 70% national support can hide a 95-to-45 partisan split. That's a wedge issue wearing a consensus costume. The party floor keeps one side from deciding the list.

Six rules sit under this test.

• Recency. At least one qualifying poll must have fieldwork in the trailing 12 months. If the freshest qualifying poll passes 12 months, the issue goes back to PENDING until a new poll lands.
• Median. When several qualifying polls exist, the 70% and 60% floors apply to the median of each cut: national, each party. One qualifying poll may sit below a floor, and the dossier discloses it. Two polls below the same floor fail the test.
• Neutral wording. A qualifying question names no politician, no party, and no partisan package. We judge the exact question text respondents saw. How the pollster framed the release is context only. If two differently worded questions on the same issue differ by 20 points or more, a wording review runs before the issue can qualify.
• Question isolation. Poll releases often bundle several questions. We isolate the one question that matches the Plank's outcome and mechanism, cite it by itself, and flag the bundling. A number from a question about a different mechanism is context, never evidence.
• The commissioned-poll firewall. Polling commissioned, funded, or facilitated by this movement, or by its affiliates or donors, never counts. That holds even when the firm is on the Qualifying Pollster List. The movement may bring an issue into public view so that independent pollsters choose to ask about it. It never grades its own homework. An issue with thin independent polling is PENDING, not passing. The movement waits, even when waiting hurts.
• Qualifying Pollster List. A poll counts only if its pollster is on the list. The list section below says how a pollster gets on it.

2. The Action Test

There has to be a specific act Congress itself can take: a bill, a resolution proposing a constitutional amendment, a confirmation standard, or an appropriations condition. If the fix lives outside Congress's power, it can't be a Plank. We grade Congress on what Congress can do.

• Exact mechanism. The qualifying polling has to test the same mechanism the Plank demands. Support for "doing something about" an issue is not support for the specific lever a Plank names. A Plank that demands a ban cannot qualify on polling that asked about disclosure.
• No bill names. A Plank states an outcome and a mechanism. A Plank never names a bill. Others draft bills, they get amended without notice, and they die when a Congress ends. A bill number can appear in a dossier as proof that Congress is acting on the issue. It appears nowhere else. A nomination written as "pass" a named bill is returned to be restated as an outcome.
• No negative planks. A Plank demands an affirmative act. "Block" a measure is not a valid Plank, because it inverts the grading.

3. The Outcome Test

A Plank has to be written as a verifiable result, not a sentiment. Every Plank specifies, at adoption:

• the floor action: the exact vote demanded, stated as an outcome and a mechanism
• the passage standard: what "yes" means, including the real procedural bar, such as cloture where cloture governs or two-thirds where the Constitution demands it
• the compliance test: what enforced looks like, because a law that passes 427 to 1 and is then ignored by the executive is not done
• the gradable actions for each chamber

"Support transparency" is a sentiment. "Pass the enforcement amendment adding a private cause of action, and confirm no Attorney General who won't commit under oath to compliance" is a Plank.

4. The Grading Test

A member's compliance has to be reducible to recorded votes and documented official actions available to that member's chamber. If it can't be proven from the public record, it can't be graded. If it can't be graded, it can't be a Plank.

5. The Single-Subject Test

One Plank, one subject, and one subject means one outcome. No omnibus. No riders. No "and while we're at it." Bundling is how consensus dies.

A term-count limit and an age cap are two outcomes. They are two Planks, even when one poll asks about both. A Plank can use more than one congressional lever (a bill, a confirmation standard, an appropriations condition) as long as every lever serves the same outcome. Bundling two outcomes into one Plank fails this test. Using more than one tool toward a single outcome does not.

The House and Senate are different machines

No member is ever graded on an outcome outside their individual power, only on whether they used every lever their own chamber gives them. Every Plank has to name its gradable actions for each chamber.

House levers: discharge petition signatures, recorded procedural votes (such as the previous question and rules votes) that decide whether a Plank reaches the floor, recorded floor votes, committee votes where recorded, and oversight actions.

Senate levers: cloture votes (the Senate has no discharge petition, so cloture is where floor access lives), recorded floor votes, confirmation votes measured against the Plank's standard, unanimous-consent actions, and oversight actions.

A senator who votes for cloture, votes for passage, and honors the confirmation standard has kept the Pledge in full, even if the bill dies, because those are every lever a single senator holds. A representative who withholds a discharge signature has broken it, even while claiming support, because that signature was the lever.

One verdict per member: KEPT or BROKE

The Report Card shows one verdict for each member of Congress. It is KEPT or BROKE. There is no score, no percentage, and no arithmetic of any kind.

• Only hard events move the verdict. A hard event is a recorded floor vote on a CLEAN or COMPOUND vehicle that carries the Plank. On a TAINTED vehicle, it is the member's recorded conduct on the live levers published for that vehicle.
• Everything else is a distinction. Sponsorships, strip motions led, discharge signatures, and clean reintroductions are listed on the member's card as receipts, each with a date and a citation.
• Distinctions never cancel a broken verdict. The verdict is not a sum.

The Report Card page carries the full detail, including how compound bills and tainted bills are graded. Read how the verdict works.

Planks are outcomes. Bills are vehicles.

Every bill version that carries a Plank gets a published status: CLEAN, COMPOUND, TAINTED, or RULE GAP. A version is CLEAN when every provision is needed to carry out the Plank's single stated outcome. One provision that creates a separate policy outcome makes the version TAINTED, and the determination names and quotes that provision.

“Tainted doesn't mean the added material is bad. It means the bill can no longer prove who supports the plank.” Definition of the TAINTED label

The label speaks to grading, never to merit. It does not ask why material was added. Status attaches to a bill version, not to a bill. Determinations change only when the criteria change, never case by case, and there is no appeals body.

The Report Card page carries the full rules: live levers, the 30 session-day clock, the mootness rule, compound vehicles, and the Gap Protocol. Read the Vehicle Status rules.

A poll counts only if its pollster is on the list

A pollster gets on the list one of two ways.

• By grade. It holds a Silver Bulletin pollster rating of B or better. A B counts. A B- does not.
• By a current rigor marker. This route is for institutional and academic issue pollsters that have no election-polling grade. The pollster needs one of two markers on the day the list is compiled. One is AAPOR Transparency Initiative membership in force. The other is at least one Roper Center data deposit in the trailing five years. An older deposit is history, not a standing credential.

Designer over vendor. When one organization designs a poll and another fields it, admission follows the organization that controlled the questionnaire and the method. The dossier names the field vendor.

Published, versioned, and frozen. The list is public and carries a version number. It stays frozen between Review Windows. A dossier is checked against the list version in force when it is compiled. The list now in force is version 1.1, compiled October 16, 2026. See the Qualifying Pollster List. A poll from a pollster that is not on the list is context. It never counts as evidence.

Public invitations. The movement may invite a pollster to fix a missing marker, by depositing recent data with the Roper Center or by joining the Transparency Initiative. Every invitation is published. The movement never commissions polling and never asks a pollster about content.

Never more than five Planks. Three is better.

Scarcity is credibility. A list of twenty demands is a platform, and platforms are partisan by nature. A list of three things that 70% of the country agrees on is a floor: the minimum viable performance standard for the body we all pay for.

Selection by evidence strength. When more candidate issues qualify than the cap allows, selection follows evidence strength. Any deviation from that order comes with a published rationale. No silent skips, no silent picks.

Two axes, never merged. Every dossier tracks evidence strength and structural difficulty as separate measures. They are never combined into one number. Each Plank also carries an obstacle type: simple inertia, an active party-line block, or a structural minority veto, such as a supermajority threshold that no group of signers can clear alone. A two-thirds Plank and a simple-majority Plank are different promises, and the Report Card says so.

Planks change once, on a schedule, never mid-cycle

Planks may be added or removed only during the Review Window. The Window opens the day after each federal general election and runs 90 days. A Plank ratified during the Window takes effect at ratification or at the seating of the new Congress, whichever is later.

• Mid-cycle changes: never. If a candidate issue surfaces mid-term, it waits in the nomination queue.
• Passage does not remove a Plank. A Plank comes off the list only when its compliance test is met. A law that passed but goes unenforced stays on the list, and the grading moves to enforcement.
• No emergency exception. The moment one exists, every cycle becomes an emergency.

Anyone can propose an issue. Every proposal gets the same test.

Anyone may nominate an issue at any time through the public form. Nominations run through a staged funnel. Each stage protects the same thing: an issue only qualifies on evidence, never on how loudly it's argued.

1. The form is the first gate. A nomination has to state the outcome in one sentence, name the exact mechanism (the lever Congress would pull, not a topic and not a bill), and link to at least two polls from the Qualifying Pollster List with party crosstabs. Missing any of those triggers an automatic educational decline that shows worked samples of the exact-mechanism rule and the Five Tests, so a declined nomination still leaves with something to work from.
2. An automated screen checks the basics: is every cited pollster on the Qualifying Pollster List, do the crosstabs check out, and has this issue already been proposed or already rejected. It checks against On Deck and the published list of rejections.
3. Survivors get a mini-dossier that covers only the Consensus Test. A full five-test dossier, the kind published on On Deck, gets built only for nominations that clear that screen. That order is deliberate. Research effort does not go to an issue that can't clear the cross-party floor.
4. Funnel numbers are published: how many nominations were received, how many passed the screen, and how many dossiers were opened.
5. Rejections are published with the failing test named. That includes popular issues.

Rejecting popular but partisan issues in public shows how the process treats its own supporters. Submit a Plank.

The numbers, set once and then left alone

• National threshold: 70%. Lower widens the list. Higher may leave it empty.
• Party floor: 60% in each major party. The anti-wedge firewall. Lowered last, if ever.
• Duration: 18 months sustained. Blocks moral panics and news spikes.
• Recency: at least one qualifying poll within the trailing 12 months. Sustained means sustained through the present, not at some point in the past.
• Poll count: 3 independent pollsters. Blocks single-pollster capture. Movement-commissioned polls never qualify.
• Qualifying Pollster List grade: B or better on the Silver Bulletin rating. Or a rigor marker that is current: AAPOR Transparency Initiative membership in force, or a Roper Center deposit in the trailing five years.
• Vehicle clock: 30 session days of the relevant chamber.
• Review Window: 90 days, opening the day after each federal general election.
• Plank cap: 5 hard, 3 target.

One way to change these rules, and it is logged

These criteria change only by amendment under the Gap Protocol. An amendment is proposed in writing, ratified by the movement's published process (founder ratification before launch), and logged in the revision ledger. The log below records every change.

An amendment to a status rule resolves open statuses back in time, because status is a fact about text. An amendment that touches member grading applies going forward only, because no one is graded against a rule that did not exist when they acted.

Criteria Draft 3, ratified October 16, 2026.

What changed, and when