How we count

The 73% figure comes from a nationally representative study fielded by Verasight, an independent research firm, in September 2026: 1,000 US adults, weighted to census benchmarks, with the design and analysis plan preregistered before launch (osf.io/x5ve6). Participants rated the principles behind the law, read the complete ballot text, and reviewed the detailed enforcement design. On the final vote, 73.3% said they would vote the Right to Honest Government into law and 8.1% opposed it; the rest were undecided. 95.5% agreed that the American people have a right to honest government service.

We report the full sequence: right after the ballot text, before the enforcement deep-dive, support was 77.1%. Reviewing the enforcement details moved some supporters to neutral, barely moved opposition, and converted a third of the initial skeptics to supporters. We headline the final number because it is the one that survived the hard part.

The September study supersedes our own pre-registered April 2026 study, which it was designed to replicate (analysis plan published at osf.io/br3u2 before the data came in). That earlier wave, 392 participants on a non-representative online panel, found 90.3% support and 99.5% agreement with the 13 principles. We no longer cite those figures as the headline; the September numbers are the ones we stand behind.

This is the number a careful skeptic should weigh, because the method is fixed in advance and open to inspection. It is a sample estimate, not a national vote, and we describe it that way.

The counter on the site is different. It adds up real people who cast a vote here, through the 1-minute vote or the full ballot, plus the supportive votes from the locked study cohort whose ballot text matches the campaign exactly. It moves in real time as people participate.

This number measures momentum, not scientific prevalence. It is not a random sample, so we never present it as "X% of Americans." It is a count of people who have stood up and said yes.

When you vote, you can optionally confirm your email. Confirmed votes form a smaller, higher-confidence subset that we can stand behind individually. Confirming is about staying connected to the effort and letting us show a vote we can fully account for. Your vote counts either way.

The whole point of the Right to Honest Government is that the public deserves accurate, well-reasoned claims from people who hold power. We hold ourselves to the same standard. If a number is a sample estimate, we say so. If it is a live count, we say that too.

Questions about the method are welcome. See the press brief or the full ballot that the study is built on.