Build a Ballot will go live for the Victorian state election on the 11th of November, 2026. We just need to wait until the final candidate lists are published, so that you have everything you need to plan your vote. Sign up for updates, and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s live!

First, you’ll answer a short series of questions about the big issues impacting you this election. Based on your results, Build a Ballot calculates a ‘match score’ with the candidates in your electorate.

It’s pretty simple: if you strongly support a policy and a candidate does too, that’s one match point. The overall match score represents the percentage of policies that you and each candidate agree on.

You can then view how you match with candidates in your electorate, see how they’re approaching the issues that matter to you and add your own notes. To build your ballot, drag candidates into your voting plan, putting them in the order of your preference. Importantly, this doesn’t have to reflect your match scores — you get to decide your own preferences!

Once you’ve created your voting plan for the lower and upper house, you can screenshot or email your plan, ready for election day.

No! Your match scores are based entirely on your own answers and there are no automatic recommendations or endorsements. Build a Ballot is designed as a starting point, and the final order on your ballot is always up to you.

For each policy, you rate your support on a 4-point scale, from strongly oppose to strongly support. We compare your answer with each candidate's or party's position on the same scale. The closer your positions, the higher your agreement on that policy. Your match score is the percentage of agreement across all policies.

Results are colour-coded: green is 70% or above, yellow is 40–69%, red is below 40%, and grey means we don't have enough information about the candidate or party to give a score.

A candidate is greyed out when we can't give them a match score. Usually that's because we don't have enough evidence to work out their positions, often because they haven't responded to our questionnaire yet. If one of your local candidates is greyed out, you can reach out to them and ask them to contact us.

You don't need to give us your name or email to use Build a Ballot. We use your postcode to show you the candidates in your electorate, and your answers to calculate your match scores. If you choose to add your email, we'll send you your voting plan, and you can opt in to receive additional updates if you choose. You can unsubscribe from any other emails at any time.

We will never sell or share your personal data and take care to ensure your emails, and any other information that might identify you, is stored securely.

After elections, we publish and share aggregated, de-identified insights on what voters care about, based on your responses to the questions in the tool. However, this never includes details that could identify you.

To access or correct your information, or withdraw your consent, email hello@buildaballot.org.au. The full details are in our privacy policy.

Not in the tool itself. Below-the-line voting is bit too complex to build in without making the tool much harder to use. We're working on resources to make planning a below-the-line vote easier.

In the Build a Ballot tool, users are asked to rate policies that address different issues.

We prioritise issues that matter to a broad range of voters, where parties and candidates take different approaches, and that can be acted on by the particular level of government. We review polling, news coverage, party announcements, civil society priorities and academic research, and we consult experts and people on the ground. If you’d like to learn more, you can read our methodology here.

You can also tell us what's driving your vote by responding to the optional questions at the end, which helps shape future versions.

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For each issue we select around four policies. When selecting policies, we consider political balance across the tool, as well as policy quality, relevance and how easy they are to understand.

Our process includes a public policy submission period, expert review and consultation with everyday voters. We publish a brief for each policy we consider, covering the problem, the solution and the arguments for and against. You can learn more about the policies we select in our Transparency Centre.

Yes! Around two months before an election, we open a public policy submission period. Anyone can submit a proposal through the form on our website, as long as it meets our criteria and includes sources.

For candidates already in parliament, we use public information like voting records, policy platforms, media appearances and social media, then share our assessment with them and give them at least two chances to respond. For new candidates, we invite them to complete a questionnaire and provide supporting evidence, which we review. Candidates running for a party are assigned their party's positions, unless they can demonstrate they hold a different view (for example, by crossing the floor).

Because we weigh multiple, sometimes contradictory forms of evidence, assigning a position always involves a degree of judgement. We publish these decisions, and the evidence informing them, in the Transparency Centre on our website.

If you’ve seen additional evidence that we haven’t considered, or believe that we’ve incorrectly assessed a candidate or party, you can submit evidence through the Transparency Centre.

Let us know by contacting us or through our Transparency Centre.

Assigning positions always involves some judgement, especially when evidence conflicts. Check the Transparency Centre to see the evidence we used, and get in touch if you think something's missing or wrong.

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We include every party and candidate that’s running at an election in the tool so that you can create a formal ballot to take to the voting booth. That said, when you complete your personalised voting plan, you may notice that not everyone has a ‘match score’.

We reach out to every candidate and party (that we can find contact details for!) twice before an election, giving them the opportunity to submit or review information about their positions on the policies in the tool. If we don’t hear back from a candidate or party, we might not have enough information to calculate a match score. In that case, a candidate will be ‘greyed out’.

Some parties and candidates may not be eligible for a match score if there’s clear evidence they were set up to mislead voters or they intentionally provide misleading information to us. You can learn more about our eligibility policy in our methodology.

If you’re a candidate, you can learn more about what to expect and how to participate on our Candidate Information page. There, you can sign up to ensure you don’t miss out on updates, or email tool@buildaballot.org.au to let us know you’re running.

We aim to contact every party and candidate with public contact details, but if we've missed you, let us know and we'll send you our questionnaire.

The short answer: Build a Ballot a tool by Project Planet, co-founded by Lizzie Hedding and Tegan Lerm.

The longer answer: Build a Ballot is co-founded by Lizzie Hedding and Tegan Lerm. We met on Instagram and bonded over a shared anxiety about our futures, and frustration that the system didn't seem designed for people like us. We started out helping our friends engage with elections — and this turned into something far bigger than we'd imagined.

Following the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, we found ourselves asking the same question again and again: if most Australians support stronger action on climate change, why doesn’t that consistently translate into political outcomes?

We noticed that same pattern occurring across other issues too; while people supported an idea or policy, they didn’t always understand where political candidates actually stood.

Ahead of the 2022 federal election, we built our first digital voting tool: Vote 1 Climate. It gave voters a simple way to compare the climate policies of candidates in their electorate before heading to the polls. The response to the tool told us something important: people weren’t disengaged — many simply lacked accessible tools that connected their values with their vote.

In 2025, we launched Build a Ballot; a non-partisan tool that helps you plan your vote. Rather than focussing on a single issue, we wanted to create something that would be useful to all Australians; no matter where they stand.

We didn't run a paid campaign. We didn't have a marketing budget. Nearly 600,000 Australians used it anyway and shared it with their friends and families. And when we ran a fundraiser, thousands of Australians supported us — most contributing under $50 — to keep our lights on and pay our rent.

Build a Ballot is a tool by Project Planet Inc, the charity we co-founded while figuring out how we could make the system work a bit better. Project Planet also runs a publication called The Share Plate, designed to help you engage with the issues you care about, without burning out.

We’re funded in two main ways: donations and partnerships.

When we launched in 2025, we had almost no money. Build a Ballot was made possible by thousands of Aussies chipping in a few bucks each to get the tool live. Since then, we’ve been lucky to receive support from several foundations who care about creating a healthy democracy (as well as Heaps Normal!), which has helped our team grow, expand to state elections and keep improving the tool.

We also make money by partnering with companies and brands that share our goal of leaving the world a little better than we found it. Check out our partnerships page or get in touch to learn more.

We don’t accept money from political parties, candidates or campaign groups, and our funders have no say over what goes into the tool.

Build a Ballot doesn’t favour any party or candidate. We apply the same process to everyone, and your results depend entirely on your own answers.

At the same time, it's built by people who bring their own perspectives; a process that involves a series of judgements and decisions. We don’t think perfect objectivity exists. So instead, we’re trying to make Build a Ballot as transparent as possible, by showing how and why we’re making decisions, then giving people the opportunity to weigh in when they think we’ve got it wrong.

We use AI to help monitor news and sources during our research, but real people verify everything and make every decision.

As a small organisation with limited resources, we see value in using AI to support research and drafting processes. We’re committed to a “human sandwich” (human first, human last) approach to ensure we carefully think through decisions and review AI generated content before we hit publish. We’ll continue to monitor emerging evidence on how we engage with AI over time.

The first thing you can do is share Build a Ballot with your friends, family and network. Show it to your mum, send it to the group chat or pop it on your stories.

You can also join a volunteer team, discover posters and other sharable resources and, if you’re able, make a tax deductible donation. For more information, head to our Supporter Hub.