METHOD
How we source
OpenOppo puts what politicians said, how they voted and who funded them side by side, in date order. We don’t tell you why. Accuracy is the whole point, so every oppo-point goes through the same checks before it’s published, whatever the party.
Before anything is published
- Every quote is checked against the original. We transcribe the original video, or read the official transcript or record, and note where and when we read it.
- Full sentences only. We never cut inside a sentence to make a quote land, and we never remove words from inside a clip.
- We read the context. We go through the whole speech or interview. If what came before or after changes the meaning, it goes on screen, not just in the caption.
- We look for their side. If they explained the change, we show it. A record that clears someone matters as much as one that doesn’t.
- Dates are event dates, not the date a video was uploaded.
- Votes come from the official roll call, read the day we publish, and we name the exact question: a procedural vote is not final passage.
- No claims about motives. We don’t say anyone voted a certain way “because” of a donation or anything else. We show what happened, in order.
- No mockery. We don’t edit to mock how anyone speaks, their health or their age.
Where footage comes from
| Source | Examples |
|---|---|
| Official proceedings (preferred) | Senate and House floor video, committee hearings, state legislature and city council video |
| The person’s own channels | Campaign and office videos, official press conferences |
| News outlets | Local TV and national news interviews, credited on screen and in the sources |
Records come from official sources: Senate and House roll calls, Congress.gov, FEC filings, state legislatures, state campaign-finance filings and city council records. Every oppo-point page links to each one it uses.
What “verified” means
An item is published on this site only when every quote has been checked against the original video, audio or official transcript, every vote against the official roll call, and every dollar figure against the filing itself, and each one is linked at its source on the page. Leads we haven’t finished checking stay off the site.
Not every verified item has a video yet. Those are marked Video coming: the page shows the same quotes, votes, filings and sources the video will, and the video is added once it’s posted on TikTok. The record lists every verified item.
Money
Dollar figures come from FEC filings (and state campaign-finance filings for state and local officials), read on the filed page or through the FEC’s own API. We show money and actions side by side, with dates. We never say a vote or a statement happened because of a donation, and where it helps, we give a comparison so the numbers can be read fairly.
Corrections
If we get something wrong, we fix it in public: the page is corrected and carries a dated correction note saying what changed, the change is listed in the corrections log, and the video gets a pinned correction. We never delete a post to hide an error, and we never change a page silently.
Disclosure
OpenOppo’s research assistant is an AI model made by Anthropic. Items involving Anthropic or its direct competitors are decided by a human editor, and those pages say so.
OpenOppo is not affiliated with any party, campaign or PAC.