Before you give

Donate

This page takes no money. It exists because two sentences on the original cannot both do the job they are given, and putting them next to each other is the whole joke.

The two sentences

1The promise

No donations from developers

"No donations from developers. To protect the independence of our scorecard..."

A good rule, seriously meant, and more than most third party sponsors commit to in writing.

2The mechanism

Contributions of $99 or less may be published anonymously

They collect the name. They do not publish it. Enforcement of the developer promise is therefore the coalition checking itself and reporting the result to you. As far as we know it has never been broken. There is also no arrangement under which anyone could find out if it had, the coalition included.

Why $99 matters here

An anonymity threshold on its own is ordinary. What matters is what sits on top of this one. The same organisation hands out letter grades to every candidate in the region and will not name a single person doing it. Anonymous money underneath anonymous judging turns a routine threshold into the part holding the structure up.

The fix is small. Publish the number and total value of contributions received under $99, with no names. Nobody's privacy is touched and the developer promise becomes checkable for the first time.

$1,429.70the annual individual limit, correctly applied, matching B.C.'s political contribution limit
$99the line below which a contributor is not published
0graders named anywhere on the original site
55 of 59anonymous donors in the housing partner's last filing

Three things to do instead

One

Email and ask

Ask who grades governance, and ask for the under-$99 total. Both are reasonable questions and both have easy answers if the answers are fine.

Two

Read the questionnaire first

All 66 questions are published. Read them before you read anybody's grade, and decide for yourself whether each was written to be answered or to be passed.

Three

Check the votes yourself

Nine incumbents are running and every one of their votes is a public record. That is the material the scorecard has ruled out, and it is free.