← Pittsburg Asks

The rulebook

These rules were published before the portal opened and do not change during the cycle. They are the whole point: the Chamber has bound itself in advance so it has no room left to play favorites.

The locked decisions

D1Vote authority

The top N distinct topics by vote are guaranteed to be asked. The panel selects the remainder from the approved pool.

D2Vote gate

Voting requires the same verified identity as submitting, and you verify once per session, not once per vote. Today that check is your email address, confirmed by a one-time link. Your phone number is collected but is NOT verified with your carrier — which is weaker than what this program intends. It becomes a phone check when carrier registration clears, and this line will say so when it does.

D3Attribution

Questions publish with first name and neighborhood only. Your full identity is held internally and is never published.

D4Duplicate handling

When the app spots a near-duplicate it proposes a merge to you, the submitter. You decide. Nothing is ever merged silently.

D5Rejection authority

Chamber staff apply the published standards as a first pass. An external certifier reviews 100% of rejections.

D6Languages

English and Spanish at full parity. Tagalog on request, with human translation.

D7Pool visibility

Every question is live and fully public the entire time the portal is open. Vote counts are visible.

D8Non-digital intake

Questions may be submitted by text message. No paper or voicemail in this first cycle.

D9Unasked questions

Approved questions that do not win a slot are published as an open dataset, offered to candidates for a written response, and handed to the panel as follow-up material.

D10Vote transfer

Votes never transfer when questions are merged.

D11Binding acknowledgment

The Chamber is bound by D1 including when it dislikes the outcome.

D12Certifier failsafe

If the certifier does not rule within 48 hours, the question publishes. The default is always to publish, and the missed deadline is published too.

D13Answer release

Written candidate answers and the recorded interviews are sealed until release, and every one of them publishes at the same moment. No candidate sees another's answers first, and no answer — written or on camera — appears ahead of the rest.

How questions are chosen

• Pittsburg City Council — November 2026 — N = 4 guaranteed topics · clustering threshold 0.18 · algorithm v1

The selection algorithm

Anyone can re-run this against the published data and get the same answer. That is the point — it turns a question of trust into a question of arithmetic.

1. Votes and submissions lock at the published closing time.
2. Every approved question is turned into a numeric fingerprint from its English text. Spanish questions are translated for this step only — the original stays the question of record.
3. Questions asking substantially the same thing are grouped into topics, using a distance threshold published before the portal opened.
4. Each topic scores as the highest single-question vote count inside it — not the total. Adding more versions of the same question does not raise its score.
5. Topics are ranked by that score, highest first.
6. The top N topics each get a guaranteed slot.
7. Inside a winning topic, the highest-voted question is asked as written. Only grammar is copyedited, and the change is published.
8. Ties are broken by whichever was submitted first.
9. The full topic map, every score, and the chosen set are published alongside the raw data.

If a subject receives fewer than 15 approved questions, the guaranteed slots are reduced to the number of distinct topics available — and we publish that it happened, along with the count.

Who reviews rejections

Every question turned down is reviewed by someone who does not work for the Chamber. Their name publishes beside each ruling.

• Adrian Badger, Steeltown Coffee

Why a question can be turned down

This is a closed list. Chamber staff cannot invent a new reason, and cannot write a free-text one.

R1Personal attack

Attacks the person rather than their record, positions, or conduct in office.

R2Slur or harassment

Targets a protected class or contains a slur.

R3Outside jurisdiction

Concerns matters no Pittsburg elected official controls. You are invited to rewrite and resubmit.

R4Unverified factual premise

Built on a claim the Chamber cannot verify. You are invited to rewrite and resubmit.

R5Not a question

A statement, a speech, or incoherent text. You are invited to rewrite and resubmit.

R6Confirmed duplicate

Identical to an existing question, confirmed by a person after submission. The vote is redirected and the submitter is notified.

R7Campaign-sourced

The submitter is a candidate, campaign staff, or committee member for this subject.

R8Private individual named

Names or identifies a private person who is not a candidate or public official.

No question is rejected for being hostile, uncomfortable, or hard on an incumbent. Sharp is allowed. Sharp is the point.

Rejected questions stay publicly visible, with their reason code and the certifier's signature. The archive is the proof.