Isle of Man · FAQs
Questions and challenges
These are the questions members and journalists ask about this scorecard, with the answers we give, published so everyone gets the same answer without having to email in. It follows the Guernsey Deputy Scorecard, which we built first. For how a division is counted, see the methodology, and for every source, the references.
Who is behind this
Who built the scorecard, who pays for it, and where it came from.
- Who is paying for this? Who is your client?
- Bridgehead Communications builds, pays for and maintains it. No member, party, Tynwald committee or campaign funds it, and no one has commissioned it. Nobody pays to appear on it, and nobody pays to have an entry corrected.
- Why the Isle of Man? Did this start here?
- No. It started in Guernsey. We built the Guernsey Deputy Scorecard first, for the States of Deliberation, and launched it in August 2026. The Jersey States Member Scorecard applies the same method to a second Assembly, and this site applies it to the House of Keys. The idea is the same in each place: set what members said they would do against how they voted, and show the source for every item.
- Why is a UK company doing this?
- Bridgehead is a UK consultancy. The scorecard draws only on records that Tynwald and the election site already publish, so where the company is registered changes neither what data it can see nor how a promise is read.
Where the information comes from
What the site is built from, how a division is read, and what it leaves out.
- Is any of this new information about a member?
- No. Every input is already public: Votes and Proceedings and Hansard, the member pages on tynwald.org.im, the 2026 election results, and the manifestos candidates published. We have not created a body of facts about anyone. We have put what is on the record side by side and named the source document, so anyone can check us.
- Why is there no attendance figure?
- Because the Keys does not publish absences. A division prints the names of members who voted For and the names of those who voted Against. A member who appears in neither list may have been absent, may have abstained, may have been in the chair, or may have been out of the room, and the printed record does not say which. Treating a missing name as an absence would put a claim on a member’s record that the source does not support, so we do not do it.
- Why is a division held back?
- A division counts only when two things are true. The names we read from the document must equal the tally the Speaker declared, and every name must match exactly one member. If the count is off, or a name matches nobody or more than one member, the whole division is held back. It is not shown as evidence of how anyone voted, and we do not guess a name to make it fit. Of the 243 divisions we have parsed from sittings between October 2021 and July 2026, 241 were counted and 2 were held back.
- Hansard and Votes and Proceedings disagree. Which do you use?
- Votes and Proceedings is the primary source, and Hansard is a transcript. They have been seen to differ. On 30 June 2026, on the Nicotine Products Bill, Hansard printed 23 For, while the Speaker declared 22 and Votes and Proceedings printed 22. Where the two disagree, Votes and Proceedings and the Speaker’s declared tally decide.
- How do you know who the Speaker is in a division?
- A division prints the presiding officers by role, as “The Speaker” or “The Deputy Speaker”, not by name. We attribute the vote to whoever held the role on that sitting date. Juan Watterson was Speaker until 21 July 2026. The Keys then had no Speaker until David Ashford was elected on 29 September 2026. The sources disagree on when the Deputy Speaker changed in early 2024, so divisions between February and 6 March 2024 under that label are left out, not attributed to the wrong member.
- What happens when a division is repeated?
- Only the final division counts. If a question was put again, the earlier division is set aside, so a member is not recorded twice on one question.
- Will you use the Keys’s electronic voting record when it arrives?
- Yes. In June 2026 the Keys resolved to record every division electronically and publish the result by member, with no start date yet. Until that exists, we read the printed documents, which carry only the names. When Tynwald publishes divisions by member, we plan to use that in place of reading the PDFs.
- Where do the manifestos come from?
- From iomelections.com, the election site, and from party and candidate websites where a candidate published a manifesto there. Each one was copied to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, so a promise can still be checked if a page is later changed or taken down. A candidate who published only a short statement, and not a manifesto, has no promises on the site.
- Why does my page show no promises?
- Either you published no manifesto, or what you published could not be read. A manifesto that exists only as scanned images has no text for us to read, and we do not transcribe it by hand. Neither case is a finding about you. If you published a manifesto and it is missing, send us the address and we will look at it.
- How are promises taken out of a manifesto?
- A language model, Anthropic’s Claude, reads each manifesto and lists the forward-looking commitments in it. The code then checks every one. A promise is kept only if its quoted wording appears verbatim in the manifesto, after whitespace and punctuation are normalised. A paraphrase presented as a quotation is dropped. What you see is your own wording.
- Is this written by AI? Could it invent a vote?
- No. Divisions involve no model at all. They are read from the Tynwald documents and counted in code. The only use of a model is reading promises out of manifestos, and the verbatim check above means a promise that is not in your manifesto cannot be published.
- Does the site cover what members say in the chamber?
- No. We use Hansard to read divisions, but there is no speaking or debate layer. We would rather say that than imply a completeness the site does not have.
How a vote will count against a promise
The planned rule. No kept or broken verdict is published yet.
- Are my promises being scored?
- Not yet. The 2026 to 2031 House has not recorded a division, so there is nothing to set a promise against, and no kept or broken verdict is published for any member. What is on the site now is each member’s record of divisions and the promises read from their manifesto.
- When will a vote count against one of my promises?
- The planned rule mirrors the one used on the Jersey scorecard. A vote will count against a promise only where it plainly contradicts it, where almost anyone reading the promise and the motion together would agree the vote runs against the promise. Where calling it a breach would need an inference or an assumption about your motives, the vote will be shown and set aside. Doubt will go to the member. This is the planned rule, not a live one, and we will say so on the site when it begins to apply.
- Why will the bar be higher for evidence against me than for evidence in my favour?
- Because the two kinds of error are different. Leaving a promise outstanding understates a member’s record, which is a shortcoming of the site. Calling a promise broken on a contestable inference is a false statement about a named person. We would rather publish fewer adverse findings that stand up than more that can be argued.
- Will a procedural vote count?
- No. A vote on how the House conducts its business, such as adjournment or the order of items, is not a vote on a policy, and members vote either way on it for reasons that have nothing to do with a manifesto. Votes on procedure will be kept out of any test of a promise.
Fairness to members
The judgement calls, the things the record cannot see, and what we do about both.
- Isn’t this just a hit piece on members?
- We do not pass opinion on how any member voted. We show how they voted, from the official record, and, in future, whether a vote matches what they promised, and only where that is clear. A division that cannot be read with certainty is held back, not counted against anyone.
- Most members are independents. Does the scorecard treat them differently?
- No, but it changes what a division means. With no party whip behind a vote, a recorded division reflects the member’s own choice. It also means a manifesto is a personal statement, and manifestos vary widely in how specific they are. A broadly worded commitment can bear on several votes, or none, and where a promise is open to more than one reading we would rather say so than claim a precision we do not have.
- A member may do most of their work in committee or behind the scenes. Is that unfair to them?
- It is a real limitation, and we state it rather than argue it away. The scorecard measures the public record: what members promised and how they voted. Committee work, private negotiation and anything that never produces a public document are invisible here.
- Isn’t it too early to judge members elected in September 2026?
- Yes, and the site does not pretend otherwise. The 2026 to 2031 House was elected on 24 September 2026, and its first sitting, on 29 September 2026, elected the Speaker. It has not recorded a division, so no verdict is published for it. The divisions on the site come from the 2021 to 2026 House.
Corrections and contact
How to get something changed, and whose job it is to check the work.
- How do I dispute my record?
- Write to contact@bridgeheadcommunications.com and name the division or promise. We check it against the source document, and if we have it wrong we correct it. Every correction we make is listed, with its date, on the corrections page.
- Am I expected to check your work?
- No. Accuracy is ours to own. The email address is there to give you a fast way in, not because verification has been handed to you. Where we have got something wrong, the correction is logged publicly rather than quietly applied.
- Can I talk this through with someone instead of writing?
- Yes. Say so in your email and we will ring you. We would rather have a challenge than leave something wrong on the site.
Still not answered
Write to contact@bridgeheadcommunications.com. Every change we make is listed on the corrections page.
Who builds this
The Isle of Man House of Keys Scorecard is built, paid for and maintained by Bridgehead Communications, a PR, public affairs and reputation consultancy. No member, party, Tynwald committee or campaign funds it. Nobody pays to appear on it, and nobody pays to have an entry corrected.
We publish it so that readers can see what members promised and how they voted, side by side, with each division traceable to the Tynwald document it was read from.