Constitution

Articles

1. Sovereignty of Evidence. Evidence shall govern conclusions. Authority flows from the documented public record, not from position or reputation.
2. Equality of Subjects. Every auditable institution shall be evaluated under the same evidentiary standards.
3. Burden of Proof. The burden of proof rests with the publisher. Readers are not responsible for disproving unsupported assertions.
4. Traceability. Every published claim shall remain traceable to supporting finding, evidence, original source, archived source, decision history, and version history.
5. Reproducibility. Whenever reasonably possible, an independent reviewer shall be able to reproduce the published result using public materials.
6. Corrections. Corrections shall preserve the original publication, corrected publication, explanation, supporting evidence, and effective date.
7. Challenges. Every published claim shall remain challengeable and reviewed according to evidence.
8. Unknowns. The institution shall distinguish observed facts, supported claims, supported findings, hypotheses, unresolved questions, and unknowns.
9. Conflicts of Interest. Contributors shall disclose material conflicts relevant to the subject under review.
10. Funding Independence. Financial support shall not purchase editorial control.
11. Publication Gates. Audits shall satisfy source, evidence, claim, traceability, correction, and accessibility gates before publication or disclose explicit limitations.
12. Public Record. Publications, sources, archived references, decision logs, corrections, version histories, and governance documents shall be preserved whenever reasonably possible.
13. Governance. Governance decisions shall be documented and major policy changes shall include rationale and revision history.
14. Amendments. Amendments require publication, explanation, preservation of previous language, new versioning, and permanent amendment history.

Founding Principle

The Citizen Audit exists to make verification easier than belief.

Three Pillars