HOW THIS SITE WORKS
Sources & methods.
A guide to our sources, checks, and limits. We publish election information without endorsements, forecasts, or winner calls.
Official sources
- Candidate names, parties, incumbent markers, and local voting dates were reviewed against Baldwin County’s election page and its November sample ballot on October 16, 2026. These facts are manually maintained.
- Results use the public data service behind Georgia’s official results website. The endpoint is undocumented and may change; delivery times are not guaranteed.
- For your registration, precinct, and personal ballot, use Georgia My Voter Page.
Collection and availability
The updater checks the election directory hourly normally. It checks approximately once per minute from 12 hours before the configured poll closing time through eight days afterward, unless the source labels results official, when checks return to hourly. Failures slow retries; HTTP 403 results in at least a day’s delay.
Hosted requests have received HTTP 403. A home Linux collector is prepared as an alternative and requires configuration and testing. Check source status for the configured collection mode and most recent successful checks. Previously imported historical data is labeled separately.
The browser checks saved results every minute while the county guide is open. Checking more often cannot make election officials publish sooner.
Validation and timing
We check Baldwin’s jurisdiction identifiers, election date, production status, source timestamps, nonnegative integer counts, contest sums where complete, and duplicate identifiers. Releases with an older source timestamp or disappearing contests or choices are rejected for review.
Current vote counts and result downloads are hidden until the configured poll close: November 3, 2026 at 7 p.m. Eastern. An official extension requires a manual cutoff update. This safeguard is not a guarantee that a release will be available at that time.
Labels that can coexist
- Historical
- A different, past election. May primary results are never substituted for November results.
- Source: official / unofficial
- Follows the feed’s label. “Official” is not an independent verification of legal certification.
- Check delayed / stale
- The latest source check failed or a successful check is overdue. Last valid saved data can remain available.
- Reviewed import
- A real official release downloaded separately, validated, and imported. Its retrieval time is retained.
History and corrections
Changed normalized releases are retained in the database. A content hash detects distinct releases, including changes to the source timestamp or provenance. Previous values remain in the history; decreases in choice vote counts are flagged. The history covers what this site captured, including any separately imported releases, and is not a complete official audit trail.
Downloads contain normalized data rather than the original raw source response. A file hash identifies our normalized release, not an election authority’s signature. Historical imports may predate this public archive interface.
Download field definitions
JSON downloads contain a versioned wrapper with the revision ID, historical flag, normalized-release hash, and snapshot. CSV has one row per candidate or ballot choice, in source order.
- revision_id / revisionId
- Our saved release identifier, not a source batch number.
- historical
- Whether the selected election is our historical May archive.
- county, election_id, election_date
- The jurisdiction slug, source election identifier, and election date.
- official_source_label / official
- The official/unofficial flag supplied by the source.
- source_published_at / sourcePublishedAt
- Source timestamp, if supplied.
- first_retrieved_at / retrievedAt
- When this distinct release was captured. Times in downloads use ISO 8601; the interface displays Eastern time.
- retrieval_method / retrievalMethod
- Automatic collection or a reviewed import.
- source_url, scope
- Original results page and the Baldwin-only scope note.
- contest_id, contest, choice_id, choice, party
- Source identifiers and labels. Blank party fields mean not supplied.
- contest_total, votes
- Reported counts. Blank CSV cells or JSON null mean unavailable, not zero. Contest totals repeat on each choice row: do not sum repeated totals.
- reporting_units, total_reporting_units
- Source reporting-unit counts. They do not measure the share of all ballots counted.
JSON uses nested contests and choices; CSV flattens them. CSV quotes text and prefixes formula-like text with an apostrophe for spreadsheet safety. JSON preserves the normalized text. Percentages are display calculations, not additional source facts.
Equal treatment and accessibility
Candidates share the same fields and visual treatment and retain source order. We do not rank, endorse, forecast, or call races. The site follows your light/dark preference and provides text and downloadable data. Accessibility improvements remain ongoing; this is not a claim of a completed conformance audit.
Site changes
- October 18, 2026: added public source status, saved-release history, JSON/CSV downloads, vote-count comparisons, and this methods page.
- October 16, 2026: launched Baldwin coverage, historical primary results, voting resources, and automatic light/dark appearance.
Methods reviewed October 18, 2026. Candidate and voting-content review remains October 16, 2026.