Method
This site makes one promise: every position it shows you is traceable to a recorded vote. Here is exactly how it is built, so you can check it.
Where the data comes from
Council voting records come from the City of Vancouver open data portal, which has published individual member votes from the electronic voting system since 2016. We import them unmodified. The published dataset was last refreshed on 8 May 2026 and currently ends at 21 April 2026, so votes after that date are not yet reflected here.
How an issue is built
An issue is a plain-language proposition someone can actually agree or disagree with, tied by hand to specific council motions. This step is manual and it is the part most likely to be wrong, so it is worth explaining.
Council rarely votes once on anything. A single agenda item can produce ten separate votes — amendments, amendments to amendments, referrals, then the main motion — and voting in favour of an amendment often means voting against the thing the amendment weakens. For every motion we therefore record whether a vote in favour counts as support or opposition for the proposition. No algorithm can infer this reliably. A human reads the motion.
What we will not do
- We do not infer positions. If someone has no recorded vote on an issue, we say so rather than guessing from their party.
- We do not score or rank anyone. No compatibility percentages, no grades.
- We do not editorialise the propositions. They are written to be answerable by someone on either side without wincing.
- We take no money from candidates or parties and coordinate with none of them.
Known gaps
- Park Board and School Board publish no voting records at all. Forty-two of the candidates on this year's ballot therefore have no record we can show you. That is a transparency failure by those bodies, not a choice by us.
- The council dataset lags several months behind the meetings themselves.
- Only motions with a recorded electronic vote appear. Items adopted without a vote do not.