About
How2Vote is an independent tool that turns the public record of parliament into a personal comparison and voting plan. Its one job is to report what parliament actually did and let you compare it with your own views — nothing more.
Built to be even-handed
How2Vote aims to favour no party. It applies the same published, deterministic method to every party and candidate, and it is deliberately two-tone — ink on paper, with no colour anywhere — so match quality is never dressed up as party allegiance; a build-time check keeps it that way. We don't claim the method is the only reasonable way to read the public record: which issues to include and how to describe a parliamentary division involve editorial judgement, set out in full on the How it works page.
Open and checkable
The source code is open under the AGPL-3.0 licence, and the compiled vote dataset is published under the ODbL. Every proposition links to the divisions behind it, the scoring is covered by tests that pin its results, and the dataset carries a checksum and a data vintage so you can check exactly what the comparison was built from.
You can read the source at https://github.com/National-Digital/how2vote.au(opens in a new tab) (with its build instructions and per-domain data licences). The versions and content hashes this build was made from are recorded below.
Versions
For the record — and to pin exactly what governed the site at a point in time — this build runs under:
- Application — 1.3.23
- Scoring methodology — 2026.1 (for the Next Federal Election card)
- Compliance policy — 2026.2
- Next Federal Election dataset — 2026-06-23 (checksum
47151da83625281e9f6441e250757f440add47137018922ff396eaf692a8d96d) - Survey submission schema — v1
- Survey consent notice — 2026-07.2
- Control-plane schema — v1
The machine-readable release manifest(opens in a new tab) records these alongside the git commit and content hashes of every legal, governance and dataset artefact this build shipped.
Data vintage
The Next Federal Election card is built from divisions up to 2026-06-23 (29 propositions, 51 parties and independents). Older elections are scored on the parliamentary record as it stood at that election. Vote data © They Vote For You (OpenAustralia Foundation), ODbL.
For researchers
If you're citing or building on this tool, the parts you'll need are public and versioned. The method is described in full on How it works; every dated change to it, alongside the log of data corrections, is on the Corrections page. The survey aggregates — the disclosure threshold that governs them, and the questions they can and can't answer — are set out on What the numbers say, with the method behind them (the estimand registry, the disclosure controls and the ethics and statistical standards it meets) on Research methods.
To cite a result, pin the dataset it was built from — Next Federal Election, version 2026-06-23. The checksum listed under Versions and the release manifest(opens in a new tab) fix the exact bytes, so a saved reference stays reproducible.
The design and governance decisions behind the site — from the age-first eligibility gate to the aggregate-only research store — are recorded as Architecture Decision Records(opens in a new tab) in the source repository.
Who makes it
How2Vote is built by National Digital (General Consulting Services Pty Ltd as trustee for the Australian Business Trust, trading as National Digital, ABN 13 744 838 758, ACN 658 447 280). It is not produced, approved, registered or endorsed by any political party, candidate, or the Australian Electoral Commission. Read our Terms of use, Privacy policy and Accessibility statement.
Accountability for How2Vote's compliance sign-offs rests with: