Run this in your municipality

Everything on this site — the candidate registry, the election receipts, the platform scorecards, the government atlas, the issue library — was built by ordinary effort with written methods behind it. But here is the honest limit: research this deep can only be done at the highest quality by someone with lived experience of the place being studied. We can do Toronto because we live Toronto. We cannot do your municipality at that standard — you can. So the methods are being published here, one document at a time, for people across Ontario and beyond to build the same thing for their own community. Your city, your name, your data. There is nothing to join, because nothing to join exists — this is an invitation to own, not to enlist.

What you’d build first

The order that worked here, and would work anywhere: first, a registry of every registered candidate in your municipality — who they are, where their website is, what they’ve published. Second, a State-of-the-Election receipt: a dated, checkable snapshot of what a voter in your community can actually read. Third, a platform baseline: a scorecard that measures whether candidates have published a substantive written plan — never whether the plan is agreeable. Direction is never judged; the only adverse finding is absence of substance. Everything else — a government atlas, an issue library, resource guides — is a later ring, and each has its own method document coming.

What we hand you, and what we never do

We hand you the written methods, the schemas and templates to copy, an honest account of what each step costs in time and skill, and our own recorded mistakes so you can skip them. We never accredit, certify, rank, or endorse anyone’s project. We never host your data or put our name on your work. If you tell us your project exists, we’ll list it here at your word — and that listing is a statement by you, not a verification by us.

Why this fall

More than three in four Canadians live somewhere that votes this fall. General local elections are held in four provinces: British Columbia on October 17, Ontario on October 26, Manitoba on October 28, and Prince Edward Island on November 2, 2026 — school-board seats ride the same ballots in Ontario, BC, and Manitoba. Quebec votes too: a provincial general election on October 5, 2026 — a different level of government, and the same case for a civic knowledge-base built in your community’s name. If you live in any of these places, a registry started this month is useful by voting day. If you don’t, it’s useful every day either way.

What it honestly costs

The scarce ingredient is not money or software — it’s one accountable person’s sustained attention. A candidate registry for a mid-size municipality is evenings-and-weekends work. Verification is the expensive part, and the expensive part is the point: every claim you publish should carry a receipt someone else can check. The honest-costs page that will live here spells this out step by step, including the failure modes we hit ourselves.

The methods, in full

Fifteen methods run this project. Each page below is the real working method in plain language — what it produces, how it runs step by step, how it’s checked, what it honestly costs, its known limits, and the mistakes we already made so you don’t have to repeat them. They are published to be audited: if you can catch us not following our own method, we want to hear it.

Start yours

If you want a hand starting, write: unknownsoldier@unitetolove.ca — say your municipality, and you’ll get a straight answer about effort, and company on the way.

— The Unknown Soldier · uniteTOlove · Toronto