PTU will be making endorsements of local candidates this year in the form of a rating: green for a recommendation to rank, yellow for a neutral rating, and red for a recommendation against ranking. These ratings will be based off of candidate questionnaires submitted by the candidates. PTU members can participate in the grading the questionnaires by signing up here.

The full process adopted by the organizing committee is below.

Candidate questionnaire process

Updated 7/27/26

Step 1. Set up the questionnaire

PTU organizers will review past questionnaires and make edits as needed. The final questionnaire will be approved by the organizing committee.

Once the questionnaire is ready, it will be uploaded into google forms.

Step 2. Set up a schedule

Questionnaires will be reviewed in batches. The election reviewers will set up when applications will come open for review, how long the review will go for, and when we will shut down the review period.

2026 schedule

Step 3. Reach out to candidates

Send invitations to all candidates in the elections we are considering. The invitation should explain the details, like timeline, how scoring will work, etc.

Step 4. Reach out to graders

Send a message to all members inviting them to be graders and explaining the process to become graders. Also send out a message to volunteers who are not members inviting them to become members if they are interested in scoring.

If we want we can send additional invitations to people to become graders using quotes from questionnaires that have already been filled out.

Step 5. Questionnaire scoring

The questionnaire responses will be loaded into a formatted spreadsheet that is view only to make it easy for graders to see all of the responses side by side.

There will be a form available for each batch. The form will include the name and position of each candidate and an option to grade them as green light, yellow light, or red light. The form will also include the question; “If a voter were to read only one response from this candidate, which one should they read?” with a drop down selecting the different questions. There will also be an option to leave extra comments if desired.

Green light - we support this candidate! This is similar to an endorsement

Yellow light - this candidate seems ok, but not strong enough to receive something like an endorsement. We are not opposed to someone ranking this candidate.

Red light - this candidate is bad for tenants, do not rank!

The questionnaire team may also choose to host in person events to discuss candidates and give people an opportunity to give feedback at those events.

Step 6. Final endorsement determination

There are four ways the scoring votes could breakdown: Consensus, Leaning towards, Mixed bag, and Consensus with detractors

Consensus

If a candidate receives all the same score (all green, yellow, or red), that is the color we will post.

Leaning Towards

If a candidate receives a mix of green and yellow or red and yellow, the color they will receive will depend on the majority. For example, a mix of green and yellow with more green than yellow will be marked as green, and a mix of green and yellow with more yellow will be marked yellow. If there is a tie, the candidate will be marked yellow.

Mixed Bag

If there is a mix of green and red (and yellow), the candidate will be marked yellow.

Consensus with Detractors

If there is a mix of green and red but the votes are very uneven, for example many people voting green and one voting red, the questionnaire team may choose to reach out to that person to learn more about their reasoning. Depending on their response, the team may choose to give the person a final rank of green or red rather than yellow.

Step 7. Share the results

All responses to the questionnaire will be shared publicly on the PTU website. PTU will also share the green-yellow-red ranking next to the responses as well as in a separate page to make it easy to see where the candidates fall. We will also include for each candidate which response or responses are the most important for voters to read.

After each new batch is released, PTU will share those results on social media and with its mailing list over email.