Frequently Asked Questions

ActionOverWords Index (AOW Index) is an independent tracker of specific promises made by U.S. officials — federal and state — and what actually happened to them: kept, broken, or somewhere in between. Most political coverage tracks what officials say. This tracks what happened to what they said, and shows the sources we found for each entry so you can check the evidence yourself.

Our standard is three kinds of sources for each promise: one official government source (a vote record, a signed bill, an agency filing, or similar primary record), one mainstream/left-leaning news source, and one right-leaning news source. A status is meant to hold up across all three — not just one outlet's version of events — and the sources are linked on the entry so you can check the underlying reporting yourself instead of taking our word for it.

There is one exception: a promise to introduce, sponsor or pass a specific, named bill is checked against the congressional record, which shows exactly what happened to the bill.

This is a new dataset, and sourcing is still being completed for many entries. Many of them carry a Still finding sources tag instead of being presented as fully verified. A status is our good-faith reading of the sources linked, not an audited record, and you can appeal any of them (see the last question below).

The same six statuses and the same AOW Score formula apply to every official, regardless of party — a status is earned by what happened, not by who's being covered. A party badge (Democrat, Republican, Independent, Nonpartisan) is shown the way an election map shows one: as a fact, not a verdict, and it's never assumed from context. The three-source standard above exists specifically so a status doesn't rest on reporting from only one side of the aisle.

Every promise gets one of six statuses — Not Started, In Progress, Stalled, Compromise, Completed, or Broken — based on what's actually happened so far, not on intent. The AOW Score is a 0–100 number for each official: the average of their tracked promises weighted by status (Completed = 100, Compromise = 60, In Progress = 40, Stalled = 15, Not Started and Broken = 0). It's a fixed, published formula, not a case-by-case editorial call — anyone can recompute it from an official's own promise list and get the same number. Full definitions and worked examples are on the methodology page.

Use the Contact form on the Index and choose “Suggested correction” or “Appeal a status.” Appeals need a named source — the outlet and headline you're citing — so it can be checked the same way every other entry gets checked. Every submission is reviewed; it's how the record gets more accurate over time.