Before anything else
Here's what a township trustee sees before a vote.
Not an inbox full of form emails to triage. Not a raw comment count. Constituent voices organized by confidence level — so the highest-quality signal leads and everything else is clearly labeled context.
Constituent Signal — Solar Facility Setback Rules
Sarah K.
★ Verified Resident
"Our property borders the proposed setback zone. The 500ft requirement doesn't account for existing ag easements — staff should look at the Kent County parcel data before the vote."
David R.
Account Verified
"I support the setback increase. The visual impact on the US-131 corridor is a legitimate concern."
Anonymous
Open — unverified
"Solar energy is the future. Stop blocking progress."
Can I stake a decision on this?
Those 289 gold-badge voices showed a government-issued ID at a civic event your office was already running. A staff member or volunteer confirmed their address is in your district. Their positions are on the record and fully auditable. That's a different category of input than an email campaign or an online petition. The answer is yes.
Coordinated input is labeled, not suppressed
When a cluster of verified residents submit near-identical text in a short window, it's tagged as “coordinated” in your dashboard — still counted, still real constituents, but labeled so you can weigh it appropriately.
Where that confidence comes from
Three tiers. Different signal, clearly labeled.
Everyone can participate from day one. As residents confirm more about who they are and where they live, their input carries more weight. Your dashboard always shows which tier a voice is from — unverified input never appears alongside gold-badge signal without a label.
★ Tier 3 — Verified Resident
Residency confirmed in person at a civic event. A staff member or trained volunteer visually checks their ID, confirms the address is in your jurisdiction, and marks the account in the app. No ID photo taken. No ID number stored. Instantly upgrades their existing account — prior activity carries forward at the new trust level.
How: attend a town hall, board night, or community event where a verification table is set up.
Tier 2 — Account Verified
Real account confirmed by signing in with Google, Apple, or verifying via phone number or email. Not anonymous. User submits their home address, which is matched against your jurisdiction boundary. Filters bots and out-of-area submissions without any staff involvement.
How: sign in with Google, Apple, or verify via phone or email in the app. Self-service, under 2 minutes.
Tier 1 — Open
Anyone can create an account and participate — no identity confirmation required. Input appears in your dashboard with a clear unverified label. Useful for gauging general public interest; never shown alongside verified signal without a label making the difference obvious.
How: sign up and participate. No friction.
The in-person process
Runs alongside your existing events. Under two minutes per resident.
No new appointments, no new infrastructure. A volunteer or staff member runs a verification table at your regular civic events — town halls, board nights, community gatherings. Here's the complete flow.
Resident opens the app at the event
They tap “Verify residency at this event” and the app shows a screen with their name, email, and a scannable personal code tied to their account. They hold it up to staff.
Staff scans their code
The volunteer opens the Debatable verify view on a tablet or phone, scans the resident's QR or enters their short code. The screen shows the resident's name and self-reported address.
Visual ID check — 30 seconds
Staff visually compares the ID to the person and confirms the address is in your district. No photo is taken. No ID number is entered. Same judgment call a poll worker makes.
Tap “Mark as verified”
One button. The system logs: who verified, when, at which event. The resident's account upgrades instantly.
Logged with verifier ID, timestamp, and event — fully auditable
Resident sees their status immediately
Confirmation banner on their phone. Gold badge on their profile. All prior activity retroactively carries verified weight — no new account, no re-registration.
What the volunteer sees
Marcus Webb
marcus.webb@gmail.com · Self-reported: 4821 Cascade Rd SE
✓ Mark as verified resident
Questions officials ask
The skeptic's checklist.
These are the questions every mayor, clerk, and city manager asks before trusting a new constituent channel. Here's where we stand on each one.
Is this extra work for my staff?
A verification table at an existing event takes one volunteer and a phone. Onboarding takes five minutes. After that, verified constituent data appears in your dashboard automatically before every relevant vote — no staff action required to generate the report.
Can it be gamed?
Tier 3 requires physical presence at an event your office runs, a government ID, and a staff or volunteer witness. Coordinating that at scale means actually sending people to your civic events with real IDs — which is constituent engagement, not a denial-of-service attack. Coordinated campaigns are labeled and visible in your dashboard.
Is this a representative sample of my district?
No — and we say so explicitly. Verified residents skew toward people who attend civic events and have government ID. We surface the composition of who is verified alongside the opinion data so you always have that context. The platform helps you understand the limits of the signal, not oversell it.
What's the liability if a volunteer makes a mistake?
Verification is a visual judgment call — the same thing a poll worker does on election day. Your office is not certifying identity for a legal purpose; you're running a constituent engagement channel. The audit log records every verification action, which protects both your office and the verifier.
Will residents actually do this?
That depends on how contested the issues you're deciding are. Tier 1 participation requires zero effort — anyone following local news can weigh in immediately. Tier 3 takes one trip to an event you're already running. Contested issues drive the highest verification rates because residents have genuine stakes in the outcome.
Privacy & integrity
No ID photos stored. Nothing leaves the room.
Staff does a visual check only — like a poll worker on election day. Nothing is photographed, scanned, or entered beyond a confirmed tap. The privacy story is a selling point, not a disclaimer.
No raw identity data retained
The only thing stored after a verification: who verified (verifier account ID), when, and at which event. Not the ID number. Not the address. Not a photo. A secure one-way hash can optionally be used to detect if the same person attempts to verify multiple accounts — computed on-device before transmission, cryptographically irreversible.
Verifier integrity
Every verification is logged with the verifier's account ID, timestamp, and event. Unusual throughput — 50 verifications in 20 minutes at one table — triggers an automatic anomaly flag. Verification expires on a cycle tied to election cadence so the roster stays current.
Honest about tradeoffs
In-person verification with a government ID favors residents who can attend events and have mobility and documentation. We disclose this openly: the verified population is a higher-confidence slice of your district, not a representative sample of every resident. The composition of who is verified is surfaced alongside the opinion data so your office always has context.
Get started
Set up verification at your next event.
We'll configure the verification setup for your office and walk your staff through it before your next town hall or board night. The orientation takes five minutes. After one event you'll have a pool of verified constituents whose signal you can use before your next vote.
Email us to get started →
or preview the dashboard