Question 1

Who is paying for this? Who is your client?

Accepted Answer

No one, and there isn’t one. This is unpaid work, built and maintained by Bridgehead Communications on our own initiative, not commissioned by any deputy, party, committee, or third party.

Question 2

Why is a UK-registered company doing this?

Accepted Answer

Bridgehead is registered in London, but the person who built this grew up in Guernsey and his family still lives there. He plans to move back. The scorecard draws only on records the States of Guernsey already publishes (voting records, Hansard, manifestos, gov.gg), and nothing about where the company is registered changes what data it can see or how a promise is scored.

Question 3

Is this connected to any client work?

Accepted Answer

No. This scorecard has no connection to any client, past or present. It was built independently, on our own initiative, and has no bearing on how any client or their work is covered elsewhere.

Question 4

Is any of this new information about a deputy?

Accepted Answer

No. Every input is already public. The States’ own voting records, Hansard transcripts, published committee mandates, and the manifestos deputies put in front of voters. We have not created a body of facts about anyone. We have gathered what is already on the record into one place and shown the source for each item, so anyone can check us. That is rather the point.

Question 5

If it is all public already, why does this site need to exist?

Accepted Answer

Because most of the difficulty is about form rather than substance. The information largely exists, but scattered across PDFs and minutes, and occasionally with gaps. When the chamber wi-fi failed on 16 July 2026, five divisions were taken by manual name call and never reached the States’ electronic voting record at all, so we read those name tables out of Hansard and filed them ourselves. When the record is that hard to use, the space gets filled by assertion on social media with no sourcing at all. That, not silence, is the realistic alternative to a site like this, and a sourced, correctable record is a far better defence for a deputy than an unsourced argument.

Question 6

Why publish attendance figures at all?

Accepted Answer

In most democracies member attendance is published as a matter of routine. In Guernsey the duty to compile and publish it was rescinded by States’ resolution on 31 March 2022 (P.2022/15), so the only committee attendance figures that exist for this term are the two tranches the Guernsey Press obtained on request and published. We would far rather not be the people assembling this. If the States published it as standard, we would simply link to it. Chamber attendance is different, and comes straight from the States’ own record of recorded votes. Either way we don’t characterise a figure as good or bad, we show it the same way we show voting records and let voters draw their own conclusions.

Question 7

Are the two attendance figures on my page measuring the same thing?

Accepted Answer

No, and we keep them separate and label the room. One is the share of recorded chamber votes missed, from the States’ own voting record. The other is committee meeting attendance, from the Guernsey Press figures. The committee figures count a meeting as attended whether a deputy was there in full or only in part, so they are generous rather than harsh, and we say so on the page rather than presenting them as precise.

Question 8

Is this written by AI? Could it invent a quote or a vote?

Accepted Answer

Vote outcomes and attendance come straight from the official record with no model involved at all. Where a model is used, the code decides, not the model. Every quote is verified as an exact substring of the real transcript turn and attributed to that turn’s actual speaker, so a model cannot invent a quote or put words in a deputy’s mouth. Models classify and draft. Deterministic checks and human review constrain them.

Question 9

There is a vote listed under my promise that has nothing to do with it.

Accepted Answer

Check which of the two lists it sits in. The votes that test the promise are the scored ones, and they drive the Kept, Broken or Mixed label. Below them, under Related votes, are the ones we judged too partial or indirect to count; they are shown for context and labelled as not counting towards the score. A vote appearing on a page is not the same as a vote being scored against a deputy. If something in the scored list does not belong there, tell us, because that is a genuine error and we have corrected a number of them. If it is in the related list and you would rather it were not shown at all, tell us that too.

Question 10

Isn’t this just a hit piece on deputies?

Accepted Answer

We don’t pass opinion on how any deputy voted, only on whether the vote matches what they promised. Each deputy’s page also carries a Notable Achievements section and their media coverage, and a Deputy’s Response feature so they can add their own explanation alongside any verdict, in their own words, without the underlying record being altered.

Question 11

What is the hardest part of this to get right?

Accepted Answer

Usually the manifesto rather than the method. The hardest judgements are not factual but interpretive. A commitment written broadly can plausibly bear on several votes, or none. That is why we grade the connection between a promise and a vote, and only score those where the vote materially bears on the commitment. Weaker connections appear as related context and are deliberately left unscored. Where a commitment is open to more than one reading, we would rather say so than claim a precision we do not have.

Question 12

Has anyone actually checked those judgements?

Accepted Answer

Yes, individually, and more than once. On 3 August 2026 we hand-audited every adverse promise-to-vote link then on the site: of 113 we corrected the direction on 5, suppressed 3 and downgraded 74 to unscored context. That audit was later overtaken by a larger one. In late August we found that a fault in our own ingestion had left 22 divisions from the July Tax Reform debate out of every deputy’s page, and loading them re-drafted every adverse finding on the site. All 77 went back through the same adversarial review, and 41 were judged too indirect or too debatable to publish and were withdrawn, affecting 26 promises across the Assembly. Both sets of decisions are pinned in the data, so the weekly re-matching carries them forward rather than quietly regenerating a version we had already rejected.

Question 13

A deputy might do most of their work in committee or behind the scenes. Doesn’t that make the scorecard unfair to them?

Accepted Answer

That’s a fair limitation and one several deputies have raised with us directly. The scorecard only measures what’s on the public record: manifesto promises against recorded votes, plus attendance. It isn’t designed to capture private lobbying, committee-level influence, or work that never produces a public document. We say so plainly rather than claiming otherwise, and we’re open to ways of making the system fairer to deputies whose impact is mostly off the record.

Question 14

A deputy might genuinely change their mind once they see the facts. Shouldn’t that count differently to breaking a promise?

Accepted Answer

There’s a real distinction between not having a fully formed view (or explicitly caveating one) and stating a clear position, then reversing it once elected. If any reversal could be waved through as vindication rather than a broken promise, there would be no accountability left in the exercise, because almost any change of position can be justified after the fact as “new information I didn’t have at the time”. The fairer approach is to record what was said, log how the vote actually went, and let voters decide for themselves whether the circumstances justified the change. That judgment sits with them, not with us, which is also the point of the Deputy’s Response feature. Where a promise comes back broken or mixed, a deputy can add their own context, so if a position genuinely shifted because the facts changed, that reasoning sits next to the verdict rather than voters seeing only a bare label.

Question 15

Isn’t it too early to judge deputies who are only in their first year of a four-year term?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in part, and the methodology page says so under Limitations. Many promises have no bearing vote yet, and the scorecard records that rather than forcing a verdict early. But some things are already testable: attendance, and any promise that has already come to a vote, including a handful such as GST that came to a vote within months of the election. Where a promise hasn’t been tested yet, that’s recorded as “in progress”, not scored against the deputy.

Question 16

A manifesto promise is often vaguely worded. Doesn’t that let a vague vote count as delivering it?

Accepted Answer

It shouldn’t, and where we’ve found it happening we’ve corrected it. A promise is only marked Kept or Broken when a specific vote directly tests it, not merely one that bears some loose connection to the same subject. Where a linked vote turned out to be a downstream or implementation question rather than a direct test of the original promise, we’ve treated that as a methodology bug and fixed the link rather than let a loose match stand. It’s also worth saying vagueness cuts both ways. Voters approve a vague promise by voting for the candidate on it, so some of the ambiguity sits with the electorate rather than with how we score it, and a vague promise can oblige a deputy to back proposals they might not otherwise support, just to stay consistent with their own wording. It isn’t only a one-way benefit to the deputy.

Question 17

Does a deputy get credit for tabling an amendment that never comes to a vote?

Accepted Answer

No. Tabling an amendment is shown on a deputy’s Amendments section as part of their legislative activity, but it does not by itself mark a promise Kept. Only a vote can do that. Allowing sponsorship alone to satisfy a promise would open an obvious loophole: a deputy could table an amendment they expect to be blocked or defeated, bank the credit, then vote however they like on whatever actually passes. Requiring an actual vote closes that off.

Question 18

My amendment was blocked by a procedural motion before it could be debated. Why doesn’t that count?

Accepted Answer

Because the motion was not about the amendment’s merits. A Rule 24(6) motion asks whether an amendment goes beyond the propositions before the Assembly, and a Rule 26(1) motion asks whether debate should stop. Neither asks whether the policy is any good, and a deputy can vote either way on one for reasons that have nothing to do with what they think of the measure. Scoring those divisions would put substantive positions on a great many deputies’ pages that they never took, which is a bigger distortion than the one it would fix. They still count towards participation, they still appear on the deputy’s page, and the amendment itself appears under Amendments laid alongside what became of it.

Question 19

If the motion blocking my amendment had failed by one vote, would my promise have been marked Kept?

Accepted Answer

No. Surviving a procedural motion scores nothing by itself. It means the amendment reaches debate and a vote on the substance, and that vote is the one we score, whichever way it goes. A deputy can clear the procedural hurdle and then lose the substantive vote, which is what happened to most of the amendments scored on this site. So the difference is not that being blocked means broken while surviving by one vote means kept. It is that when an amendment is blocked, the vote that would have decided the promise never happens at all.

Question 20

Does a promise only count as Kept if the vote passed?

Accepted Answer

No, and it is the most common misreading of the scorecard. A promise is kept when a deputy voted to deliver it. Whether the motion carried is no part of the test, and most of the votes scored on this site are on motions that lost. A promise does not have to end up in law either.

Question 21

Why measure votes rather than the effort a deputy put in?

Accepted Answer

A recorded vote is the one thing that holds all 38 deputies to identical terms. It happened or it did not, a deputy voted one way or the other, and the States’ own record settles which, whatever account anyone gives afterwards. Effort has a partial record, and we were wrong to suggest otherwise when a deputy first put this to us. Amendments are lodged and published, so the fact of the work is provable. What publication cannot show is the difference between laying an amendment and fighting to get it into a position where it could pass, and those are not the same act of political effort. Scoring effort would also put a deputy’s own account of how hard they tried at the centre of a scorecard whose purpose is to check them. What we do instead is show the amendments a deputy laid, beside the voting record rather than inside it.

Question 22

A vote everyone supported is being cited as evidence I kept a promise. Is that fair?

Accepted Answer

Yes. You made a commitment, a vote on it came before the Assembly, and you voted to deliver it. That you kept your word does not become less true because colleagues voted the same way, and a deputy who never made that commitment gains nothing from the same division, because they have no promise for it to test. What a lopsided tally tells a reader is something about the promise rather than the vote. A commitment nothing in the chamber opposed was an undemanding one to make, and keeping it says less about a deputy than keeping a contested one. That is why every scored vote now carries its division tally, so a promise kept 39 to 0 reads differently from one kept 21 to 16 instead of both reading simply as kept. The reverse case is stronger still: a deputy who votes against a motion almost everyone else supports has done something genuinely revealing, and we treat it that way.

Question 23

What if something on my page is wrong?

Accepted Answer

Use the “Report a profile issue” button on your own page, or reply to any email we’ve sent you. Both go straight to us, and every deputy’s page carries a running ticker logging corrections in real time. Several deputies have already used this to fix a wrongly attributed amendment, a promise’s wording, and an attendance record.

Question 24

If I send you a response, will you publish it in my words?

Accepted Answer

Yes, verbatim. We used to summarise deputies’ responses and stopped after one summary introduced an error of its own, describing a deputy’s amendments as having been ruled outside the scope of a debate when in fact a motion to that effect was moved and carried 18 to 17. Responses now appear as written, in the deputy’s own words, or not at all.

Question 25

If a correction is made to my page, does it survive the next automated run?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and that is by design. The promise-to-vote matching re-runs weekly and rebuilds every link, so an unprotected manual fix would be overwritten by it. Corrections, suppressions and direction fixes are pinned in the data and carried across each re-run, so a correction cannot be quietly undone by the next job. A daily check also flags any editorial change we applied but failed to log publicly.

Question 26

Am I expected to check your work every month?

Accepted Answer

No, and that is not the design. Accuracy is ours to own. We wrote to all 40 deputies and Alderney representatives individually before publication rather than after, we pushed the launch back a week specifically to allow review time, there is a public corrections log so every change we make is visible, and an automated check flags any correction we apply but fail to log. The feedback form exists to give you a fast route in, not because verification has been handed to you.

Question 27

If I read only one part of the site, what should it be?

Accepted Answer

The debate analysis on the Speaking Activity page. Each of the busiest debates carries around 800 words on the arguments made, who made them, and verified quotes from both sides. Taken as a whole the picture is a positive one. It shows an Assembly doing detailed and difficult work, very little of which gets reported, and most deputies come out of it considerably better than the general public conversation about them.

Question 28

Can I talk this through with someone rather than filling in a form?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Reply to any email we’ve sent you and ask for a call, or say so in the feedback form on your page and we will ring you. We would rather have a challenge before publication than after it.

Questions and challenges

Who is behind this

Where the information comes from

Fairness to deputies

Corrections and contact

Still not answered

Who builds this