The Audit Toolkit

The course taught eight procedures, and together they are one method: every civic claim has a receipt, and the receipt has an address.

Line them up by the claims they audit. A constitutional claim — "the Constitution says" — runs through the clause lookup at Constitution Annotated (Gov 042). An opinion claim — "Americans want" — runs through the poll checklist: margin, dates, respondents, population, question (Gov 180). A results claim — "the voters chose" — runs through the returns questions: share, rule, margin, threshold (Gov 230). A data claim in a table runs through the crosstab bases (Gov 290). A claim about Congress — "they passed," "they blocked" — runs through the five-gate bill trace at congress.gov (Gov 340). A claim about "the bureaucracy" runs through the agency classification, since the type predicts the leverage (Gov 400). A claim that "the Court ruled" runs through the five-step decision read at supremecourt.gov (Gov 440). And a claim about what government did or failed to do runs through the policy trace, stage by stage (Gov 475). Eight procedures, a handful of free public databases, zero trust required — which is also this course's own contract: every entry maps to a source in the public appendix, and a viewer who runs the audits on the course itself is using the course correctly.