About Ballot Commons

This site was built by an individual, with the help of AI tools, for the purpose of increasing voter awareness of candidates and key issues, without requiring users to give up their data to 3rd party sources. Keep in mind that AI tools can make mistakes. If you find errors or potential bias on any pages, or would like to support Ballot Commons, email contact@ballotcommons.org.

Principles

Facts only. We don’t use blogs or opinion articles, and we don’t show polls or projections.
Candidates are listed alphabetically by last name in every race. This is not the ballot order. We do this to ensure that the order that candidates appear is not biased.
Nothing about you is logged or stored by this site. Your address is matched in your browser. To do that, the page downloads one address file chosen by the first three digits of your ZIP code; your street address is never sent. The site uses no cookies or analytics.

What this site covers

Federal, statewide and district races in Texas for the November 3, 2026 general election: U.S. Senate, U.S. House, statewide executive offices, the Texas Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals, the State Board of Education, the Texas Senate and House, and the courts of appeals. County, city, school district and other local races and measures are not covered. Full profiles are available for federal and statewide executive candidates; Texas Senate and House candidates have basic profiles; judicial candidates are listed by name only.

How your ballot is determined

Your address is matched to a street address range from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2025 TIGER/Line address files (2024 files for Jim Hogg and Travis counties). Each range is assigned to districts using official boundaries: the 2026 congressional map (PlanC2333) and 2026 state legislative districts from the Census Bureau, and State Board of Education districts (PLANE2106) from the Texas Legislative Council. Courts of appeals are assigned by county, using the county lists published by Ballotpedia.

Address ranges are approximate; always confirm with your county’s sample ballot.

How lists are ranked

Candidates: alphabetical by last name.
Donors: two lists, each the top 10 by total given since October 8, 2016, across all of the candidate’s campaign committees: first PACs and other political committees and organizations, then individuals. Each organization is labeled by type (PAC, party committee, candidate committee or other organization) from the FEC’s entity code or, for Texas filings, by matching it to the Texas Ethics Commission’s registered committees. The candidate’s own money and transfers between their own committees are shown separately.
Outside spending (U.S. Senate and House candidates): the top 10 spenders by amount from FEC independent expenditure reports for the 2026 cycle, with spending to support and to oppose counted separately. Each spender is labeled by its FEC committee type, such as Super PAC or party committee.
Endorsements: up to 10, ordered by the endorser’s reach level (the sitting President, national, statewide office, U.S. House, statewide organization or newspaper, state legislator, local), then alphabetically.
Key issues: the first five issues in the order the candidate lists them on their own website.

How the issues quiz works

The quiz questions are policy choices a candidate could state on a campaign website. Your answers stay in your browser tab and are never sent anywhere.
For each candidate, we record their position on each question only when they state it themselves, on their campaign website, in their Ballotpedia profile or candidate survey, or, for current officeholders, on their official office website.
For current and former legislators, we also use a recorded floor vote when the bill directly answers a quiz question (for example, the Raise the Wage Act for the federal minimum wage, or Texas SB 2 for school vouchers). We count a vote only in the direction it clearly shows: a yes vote on a bill to raise the minimum wage counts as support for raising it, but a no vote isn't counted, because members vote no for many reasons. A candidate’s own statement always takes priority over a vote.
If a candidate hasn’t stated a position, we show “No public position found.” We never infer a position from party, endorsements or donors.
“Same” means the candidate’s stated position matches the answer you chose. Otherwise we show both positions so you can compare them yourself. For questions where you can choose more than one answer, we note when a candidate names the same priority, and show “Different” only if they explicitly oppose it.
Questions are compared only for offices they apply to. For example, tariffs are compared for U.S. Senate and House candidates, and school vouchers for state offices. Judicial candidates aren’t compared.
Results are never combined into a score or ranking.
Each question has a “What does this mean?” explainer: a plain-language definition, where things stand as of the date it was last reviewed, the main arguments on each side (or what each option would do), and the official sources used, such as the Congressional Research Service, congress.gov, Senate and House vote records, Texas Legislature Online and federal statistics agencies. Explainers don’t suggest an answer and aren’t used in the comparisons.

Sources used

Ballotpedia: certified candidate list, biographical facts, endorsements, courts of appeals county lists, redistricting
Official candidate campaign websites: biographies, issues, endorsements
Official office websites of current officeholders (for example, house.gov member sites): biographies and issue statements
Office of the Clerk, U.S. House and the Texas House and Texas Senate journals: recorded votes used in the issues quiz
Texas Ethics Commission: Texas campaign finance reports, from the commission’s bulk campaign finance data (TEC_CF_CSV), downloaded October 8, 2026
Federal Election Commission: federal campaign finance (openFEC API)
U.S. Census Bureau: TIGER/Line address ranges; TIGERweb congressional and legislative boundaries; 2020 ZIP code (ZCTA) to place relationship file, used to match city names to ZIP codes
Texas Legislative Council: State Board of Education districts (PLANE2106, adopted January 2023)
Vote.org: links to each state’s official polling place locator
El Paso County Elections Department: official notices for the Ysleta ISD template measure
KFOX14 (Aug. 12, 2026): factual news reporting used for context on the Ysleta ISD measure
vote.gov: voter registration