The Balanced Ticket

Not left. Not right. One country. An open-source, AI-powered people's ticket for a hypothetical 2028–2032 administration. Vote on every seat, or write in your own.

Vote: https://balancedticket.bigpicsolutions.com

"My hope here is that we can find a common ground, break through any obstacles that may have kept us apart." Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), Contact, 1997

What this is

In October 2026, Matthew McConaughey posted a video asking people to consider independent candidates who could get both parties working together. This project asks the next question: if there were an independent ticket, who should be on the team?

• The picks: Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini each picked the strongest person for every seat, blind, judged only on track record: speed, skill with AI, results for people with the fewest opportunities, a clean record, readiness to serve through 2028–2032, and trust across differences. Party, gender and race were not scored. Where they agreed, that's the AI pick, with runners-up beside it. The whole process is in docs/how-we-got-here.md.
• The lead: McConaughey starts as the strong lead for president. Like every seat, it's open to write-ins.
• Who we call on: a votable list of wealthy Americans with a record of backing independents or fixing how we vote, asked to fund the ticket. Elon Musk was the fixed backer until 2026-10-26; he shelved the America Party and now funds Republican groups, so he's one option among several. Funders get no government job and no say over appointments.
• The people decide: vote for any pick, or write in your own with a reason. An AI sniff test checks that each write-in is a real person with a real reason, without judging their politics. Names people keep writing in join the list and rise by votes. AI reviews the votes, write-ins and feedback periodically and updates the team.

Nobody named has endorsed this, agreed to a role, or been asked. It's an independent citizen project.

Change the slate

The slate lives in public/slate.json. To propose a different pick, runner-up or seat, open a pull request that edits it, and say why in the description, with sources. Every pull request is checked automatically and reviewed before it's merged.

How it works

Piece	What
public/	The static page (index.html, app.js, styles.css), slate.json, and img/ (banner and share image)
src/worker.js	Cloudflare Worker: /api/vote, /api/tally, /api/feedback, /api/config, the AI sniff test; serves public/ for everything else
schema.sql	D1 (SQLite) tables: votes, alternatives (write-ins) and feedback
wrangler.toml	Worker config. Secrets are set with wrangler secret put, never committed

Everything runs on Cloudflare's free plan: Workers, D1, Workers AI and Turnstile. Security headers (CSP, HSTS, no framing) are set in public/_headers and on every API response.

Anti-gaming (best effort, not bot-proof)

• Voting starts with a Cloudflare Turnstile check, verified server side. A passed check earns a signed, HttpOnly pass cookie good for 30 minutes of voting, so people aren't checked on every click.
• Burst limit: 60 votes or feedback posts per minute per network (Cloudflare's rate limiting binding).
• One vote per seat per browser, using a random HttpOnly cookie. Voting again changes your vote.
• Per-network caps: 25 votes per seat and 400 votes in total per IP per day. Bots that clear cookies run into the cap, and households and offices still fit under it.
• No raw IPs are stored, only sha256(salt + day + ip), which rotates daily.
• Honeypot field, same-origin check, length limits, no links in suggestions.
• Write-ins: an AI sniff test screens each new one (5 per voter and 40 per network per day). A name joins the seat's list once 3 different voters typed it and one passed the sniff test, shown under the first approved spelling. Reasons show only for names on the list.

If it gets gamed, tighten the caps, require Turnstile's non-interactive challenge, or add a sign-in. Change it and say so on the page.

Run it locally

cp .dev.vars.example .dev.vars          # Cloudflare's always-pass Turnstile test keys
npx wrangler d1 execute next-american-chapter --local --file schema.sql
npx wrangler dev                        # http://localhost:8787

Deploy (Cloudflare, free)

One time:

npx wrangler login
npx wrangler d1 create next-american-chapter      # put the database_id in wrangler.toml
npx wrangler d1 execute next-american-chapter --remote --file schema.sql
# Cloudflare dashboard > Turnstile > Add widget (managed) for the site's hostname,
# then put the site key in wrangler.toml [vars] TURNSTILE_SITE_KEY
npx wrangler secret put TURNSTILE_SECRET
npx wrangler secret put HASH_SALT               # long random string, e.g. `openssl rand -hex 32`

Then npx wrangler deploy.

After the first deploy, set the share image tags (og:image, twitter:image in public/index.html) to the full live URL, e.g. https://<host>/img/og.jpg. X ignores relative image URLs.

Write-ins

Anyone can write in their own pick for any seat, with a reason. Each new write-in gets an AI sniff test (Workers AI, @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast): it must be a real, identifiable public person, with a reason that isn't spam, abuse or defamation. Politics and merit aren't judged. Passing reasons show on the seat right away. If the AI is unavailable, the write-in is kept but its reason stays hidden until reviewed. Once 3 different people write in the same name (case and spacing don't matter), it shows on that seat's "Top write-ins" board and others can back it with one tap, no reason needed.

When a write-in has strong support, put it on the ballot:

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗