Methodology & corrections

What counts as an entry

• Criminal convictions only. An arrest, charge, indictment, lawsuit, or allegation is not a conviction and is never listed. A conviction means a guilty verdict, a guilty plea, or a no-contest plea entered as a conviction.
• The person held or sought public office. Elected or appointed, at the local, state, or federal level. We record the office and party as they were at the time of the offense or conviction.
• The offense is a child sex crime as defined by the statute of conviction. We state the statute/charge rather than our own characterization.
• At least one primary source is required. No entry exists without a court record, a prosecutor/DOJ/AG document, or established reporting that cites the conviction. Entries with empty sources are not published.

How entries are added

The curated base list is a single, version-controlled file. Nothing is auto-scraped and auto-published. A scraper or news alert may surface a candidate for review, but a human must verify the conviction against primary sources and record the citation before it appears here. Every change is reviewable as a diff.

Public submissions

Anyone can submit a case. A submission asks for the official's name, party (with a link proving affiliation — e.g. Ballotpedia or a state party registration record), and one or more links proving the conviction (a court ruling, a prosecutor/DOJ/AG document, or established reporting).

A submission is not a publication. Everything sent through the form enters a private review queue. A human reviewer opens each proof link and confirms (a) the person held the stated office, (b) the party affiliation, and (c) that there is an actual conviction— not a charge or allegation. Only after that manual check is a case approved and added to the public list and the charts. Submissions that can't be verified are rejected and never appear.

What the charts can and cannot tell you

Every case counted is a verified criminal conviction with a cited source. But these bars are not a complete census of every such conviction in the country, and they are not adjusted for the different numbers of officeholders, candidates, or news coverage each party has. Because the list is curated and not exhaustive, the totals should not be cited as a definitive comparison between parties.

There is no single national database of these convictions. Records live across thousands of county, state, and federal court systems; party affiliation is not part of a court record and must be matched separately. A genuinely complete and unbiased count is not achievable from public data, which is exactly why we foreground these limits.

Overturned, vacated, and pardoned convictions

If a conviction is reversed or vacated on appeal, we mark it as overturned and exclude it from the headline counts — but we keep the record visible, because the correction is part of the public history. A pardon or commutation does not erase the fact of the conviction, so pardoned cases remain, clearly labeled.

Corrections, disputes, and removal requests

We take accuracy seriously: wrongly labeling someone is a serious harm. If you believe an entry is inaccurate, misidentifies a person, conflates a charge with a conviction, relies on a dead or misread source, or should be updated because a conviction was overturned, use the correction form:

• Go to the correction, dispute & removal form (at the bottom of the Submit a case page) and describe the specific problem.
• Include links to supporting documents (court records, appellate rulings) where possible.
• Disputed entries are reviewed promptly; entries we cannot substantiate are removed while under review rather than left up.