Methodology
How we build
your ballot.
The short version: your address determines your districts, your districts determine your races. Here's the long version.
How we determine which races appear
- 1You enter your address. Street, city, state, ZIP. We send it to Geocodio, which translates it into geographic coordinates and the political districts that contain those coordinates. We don't store your address.
- 2We identify your districts. Specifically: your county, congressional district, state senate district, and state house (delegate) district.
- 3We filter the race database. For each race in our database, we check whether it applies to someone in your districts. A Sheriff race in Howard County doesn't appear for an Anne Arundel voter; a Congressional District 3 race doesn't appear for a CD 5 voter.
- 4We group and display. Races are bucketed (Federal, State, Local, Judicial) and ordered by jurisdiction. Within each race, candidates are sorted alphabetically by last name — the same order they appear on Maryland ballots.
What districts we match against
For your address, we look up and filter on these district types:
Determines local races (Sheriff, County Executive, Board of Education, etc.).
Determines your U.S. House race. Maryland has 8.
Determines your State Senator race. Maryland has 47.
Determines your Delegate race. Most are multi-member (3 seats per district); some are split into letter-suffix subdistricts (1A, 21B, etc.) that elect 1 each.
Derived from your county. Maryland has 8 judicial circuits; each county belongs to exactly one. Determines which Circuit Court judges appear on your ballot.
Some county-level races (County Council, some Central Committee seats) are split by Councilmanic District. Geocodio doesn't return councilmanic districts from an address, so for now we show all of them in your county and let you find yours by number. Fix coming in a future update.
Data refresh cadence
Our race and candidate data is a snapshot of the candidate filings published by the Maryland State Board of Elections for the upcoming primary or general election. We re-ingest the snapshot whenever the filing window updates — typically:
- When the filing deadline closes
- If a candidate withdraws or is added
- In the final two weeks before election day
Live data (current incumbents, address-to-district lookup) is queried on demand each time someone uses the site, so it's always current.
The site currently reflects filings for the June 23, 2026 Maryland primary.
What we don't do
Just as important as what we do:
- ×No recommendations. We don't tell you who to vote for, and we don't partner with anyone who does.
- ×No predictions. We don't publish polling, forecasts, or who's “likely to win.”
- ×No fundraising data — yet. We don't currently show who's raised what or from whom. We're evaluating whether and how to add this in a neutral way.
- ×No voter registration handling. We can't register you to vote or check your registration status. For that, visit the Maryland SBE.
- ×No personal data storage. Your address goes to Geocodio for the district lookup and to your browser's URL bar. We don't save it anywhere.
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