Sources & methods
How to read the record
See where a claim comes from, what a number counts, and what remains unknown.
Start with the scope
Open current published coverage for each collection’s count, period and reader. Recent refresh samples are smaller import batches; their counts are not the size of the full archive. Collections overlap and should not be added together.
A source date describes the public record. A retrieval date describes when this app observed it. Calendar dates retain the source’s date; displayed retrieval times use Pacific time. A failed refresh keeps the last successful data and its date rather than presenting it as new.
Unavailable is not zero. An absent vote is not a recorded nonvote, an unreported amount is not zero spending, and no indexed case is not a finding that no case exists.
What a rating measures
Participation = 100 × (Yea, Nay or Present) ÷ eligible imported roll calls, rounded to the nearest whole point. Explicit Not Voting or Absent counts in the denominator. Each distinct roll call counts once. We include identified passage, concurrence and substantive resolution decisions and exclude procedural votes, standalone amendments, conflicting records and unknown positions. No eligible roll calls means no rating. We match official policy areas or specific terms in source titles. A bill can concern multiple issues. Sponsors, projects, donations and lobbying filings add context and contribute no points. The score measures recorded participation in a partial collection. Read the vote question and position to judge agreement.
100/100
3 recorded responses in 3 eligible roll calls.
67/100
2 recorded responses and 1 explicit nonvote: 100 × 2 ÷ 3, rounded.
Unrated
No eligible published roll calls for this issue.
Agreement with your votes counts the shared Yea or Nay choices that match yours. Every comparable roll has equal weight. It is separate from participation, effectiveness and public opinion. Your choices remain in the current tab.
The voter-priority survey determines which issue categories appear. It does not award a member points. The issue reader links the survey questions, percentages and methods and distinguishes the survey from the separate exit poll.
Derived categories
Why a record appears under an issue
Records are grouped using official policy areas or specific words in their published titles. Each listed record shows the match that included it and the source used for that match.
The explanation beside each record identifies its matching policy area or title phrase and links to the source used. This category is CongressClarity’s grouping. It is not a finding about the member’s intentions, the bill’s effectiveness, or whether you agree with the vote.
Matches ignore letter case, respect whole words or phrases, and can place a record in more than one issue. A matching official policy area takes priority over a title phrase. Donor names and party labels do not decide an issue category.
Economy and jobs
Official policy areas: economics and public finance, finance and financial sector, labor and employment, taxation
Words or phrases in a published title: economy, economic or economics, inflation, affordability, cost of living, consumer price or prices, wage or wages, unemployment, job creation, small businesses, income tax, tax, taxes or taxation, Internal Revenue Code, retirement saving or savings, employee ownership, ratepayer, supply of housing, housing affordability, housing cost or costs, tariff or tariffs, impose duties or impose global duties, duties on articles or imports
Exact matching expression
\b(?:econom(?:y|ic|ics)|inflation|affordability|cost of living|consumer prices?|wages?|unemployment|job creation|small businesses?|income tax|tax(?:es|ation)?|internal revenue code|retirement savings?|employee ownership|ratepayer|supply of housing|housing affordability|housing costs?|tariffs?|impose (?:global )?duties|duties on (?:articles|imports))\b
Health care
Official policy areas: health
Words or phrases in a published title: healthcare, health care or health-care, Medicare, Medicaid, medical care, medical research, public health, prescription drug or drugs, health insurance, health coverage, hospital or hospitals, patient care, mental health, maternal health, clinical trial or trials, critical therapies, cancer treatment, disease prevention
Exact matching expression
\b(?:health[ -]?care|medicare|medicaid|medical care|medical research|public health|prescription drugs?|health insurance|health coverage|hospitals?|patient care|mental health|maternal health|clinical trials?|critical therapies|cancer treatment|disease prevention)\b
War and peace
Official policy areas: No policy area alone qualifies.
Words or phrases in a published title: war powers, declaration of war, armed conflict, armed forces from hostilities, use of military or armed force, military operation or operations, ceasefire, cease fire or cease-fire, peace talk or talks, peace agreement, peacekeeping, foreign military aid or assistance, military strike or strikes
Exact matching expression
\b(?:war powers|declaration of war|armed conflict|armed forces from hostilities|use of (?:military|armed) force|military operations?|cease[ -]?fire|peace talks?|peace agreement|peacekeeping|foreign military (?:aid|assistance)|military strikes?)\b
Immigration
Official policy areas: immigration
Words or phrases in a published title: immigrant or immigrants, immigration, border security, border patrol, asylum, deportation, naturalization, undocumented migrant or migrants, sanctuary cities, refugee resettlement
Exact matching expression
\b(?:immigrants?|immigration|border security|border patrol|asylum|deportation|naturalization|undocumented migrants?|sanctuary cities|refugee resettlement)\b
National debt
Official policy areas: No policy area alone qualifies.
Words or phrases in a published title: national debt, federal debt, debt ceiling or limit, statutory debt, public debt, budget or federal deficit, deficit reduction
Exact matching expression
\b(?:national debt|federal debt|debt (?:ceiling|limit)|statutory debt|public debt|(?:budget|federal) deficit|deficit reduction)\b
Crime and public safety
Official policy areas: crime and law enforcement
Words or phrases in a published title: crime, criminal justice, law enforcement, violent offense or offenses, fentanyl trafficking, fraud victims or enforcement, gun violence, police department or departments, homicide, Controlled Substances Act, scheduling of fentanyl
Exact matching expression
\b(?:crime|criminal justice|law enforcement|violent offenses?|fentanyl trafficking|fraud (?:victims|enforcement)|gun violence|police departments?|homicide|controlled substances act|scheduling of fentanyl)\b
Partisan gridlock
Official policy areas: No policy area alone qualifies.
Words or phrases in a published title: partisan gridlock, government shutdown or shutdowns, lapse in appropriations, congressional gridlock, filibuster reform, reform of the filibuster
Exact matching expression
\b(?:partisan gridlock|government shutdowns?|lapse in appropriations|congressional gridlock|filibuster reform|reform of the filibuster)\b
Climate change
Official policy areas: No policy area alone qualifies.
Words or phrases in a published title: climate change, climate resilience, greenhouse gas or gases, carbon emission or emissions, global warming, decarbonization, carbon dioxide, climate adaptation, clean energy
Exact matching expression
\b(?:climate change|climate resilience|greenhouse gas(?:es)?|carbon emissions?|global warming|decarbonization|carbon dioxide|climate adaptation|clean energy)\b
Education
Official policy areas: education
Words or phrases in a published title: education, educator or educators, elementary school or schools, secondary school or schools, school district or districts, student loan or loans, student aid, student athlete or athletes, Pell grant or grants, early childhood learning, higher education
Exact matching expression
\b(?:education|educators?|elementary schools?|secondary schools?|school districts?|student loans?|student aid|student athletes?|pell grants?|early childhood learning|higher education)\b
Racism and racial discrimination
Official policy areas: No policy area alone qualifies.
Words or phrases in a published title: racism, racial discrimination, profiling, equity, injustice or segregation, discrimination based on race or on the basis of race, racially motivated, antilynching, anti lynching or anti-lynching
Exact matching expression
\b(?:racism|racial (?:discrimination|profiling|equity|injustice|segregation)|discrimination (?:based on|on the basis of) race|racially motivated|anti[ -]?lynching)\b
When a vote uses a related bill’s classification
- A vote's own source is checked first. If it does not identify an issue, a bill record can supply the match only when its Congress and normalized measure number agree with the vote.
- The vote title must match the bill's full title, ignoring case. A bill-number-only title does not meet that test.
- If the vote title is blank or only its measure number, a title from the same chamber's verified passage can be used only for that exact roll and vote date. A clearly different title is not replaced.
- For a chamber passage title, the bill's policy area is used only when that title matches the bill's full title. Otherwise only the passage-title words are checked.
- The match-source link may therefore differ from the original vote link. Both are shown so the record and its issue classification can be checked separately.
Offices, people and contact routes
Current House and Senate directories establish serving offices and stable member identifiers. Official office pages supply additional contact routes, named service contacts and their published purpose. A missing public email stays unavailable; a guessed address is never substituted.
A ZIP code can cross district boundaries. An explicitly submitted street address can be checked with the Census Geocoder against the serving Congress’s geography. This lookup does not save the address in a public URL or contact database. Vacant seats retain the Clerk’s published office routes.
Original chamber votes
The House and Senate readers identify a roll by chamber, Congress, session and number. Named positions are matched to retained chamber originals. Source dates, official totals and the people named on a roll remain visible, including explicit Present and Not voting entries.
A missing person is not assigned a vote. Historical identity and party evidence stay separate from today’s roster. Senate calendar dates can differ from the printed Record’s edition date. A formal change of vote links both the earlier printing and the correction; the displayed final position follows that documented change.
Two-roll comparisons use the same person’s identifier. Participation counts explicit recorded responses against eligible published positions; an absent source row is reported separately. Displayed nonvotes retain their original-source links.
The historical voting archive
The historical reader uses Voteview’s published roll, person and position files with retained edition checksums. It spans the 1st through 119th Congresses. Voteview roll numbers can differ from chamber numbers; a chamber original is attached only when its identity is explicitly matched.
Comparable-vote percentages count shared Yea or Nay decisions, with other cast codes shown separately. The codebook explains paired and announced positions. Voteview excludes quorum calls and vacated votes from its published roll-call dataset; presidential positions are outside the congressional-member collection. No row means no inferred choice.
This is the voting archive’s period. Bills, finance, elections and other collections have their own start dates and coverage; they do not inherit this archive’s breadth.
Bills, amendments and changed wording
GovInfo’s bill-status files and published text editions identify the measure, Congress, version, dated actions and source relationships. The legislative desk’s catalog is larger than the recent sponsor-record sample used by member pages. A catalog entry does not mean every text edition is cached locally.
A selected introduction can be followed by unnumbered passages in the original XML. The reader displays those following passages separately in document order, preserving each source ID and citation. It stops at the next numbered section and provides continuation navigation when needed; it does not rename an unnumbered passage as a numbered section.
Text comparisons identify both source editions and the passages being compared. A numbered amendment, its parent amendment and its underlying bill are distinct records. An agreed amendment is not proof that its wording became law.
Amendment printings retain the original Congressional Record text and discovery metadata. The source passage must match the amendment and its underlying bill; a conflicting publisher reference is shown separately. Submitted and modified printings can have identical operative wording but different parent-amendment context. Comparisons ignore whitespace and keep context changes separate. Large texts remain available in full through numbered pages and downloads even when an inline comparison exceeds its stated limit.
House amendments adopted through a rule can refer to a committee print, House report, reported bill or a named section of the adopting resolution. Their document cards preserve the official source chain and distinguish a whole document from a specified section. A full reported bill can contain text outside the substitute; its typography can identify proposed additions and omissions, so consult the original PDF or XML. These source cards are prepared separately from page requests and show when a check or metadata match has become stale.
Occasionally an official action cites a different page from the original amendment wording. A recovered passage must still match the bill, dated offering, named member and specified bundle within the source discussion. The reader and downloaded text identify any such citation difference; a nearby passage alone is insufficient.
Discovery checks dated candidate sources, including modified floor printings, and reports unavailable, pending or conflicting sources. The publisher’s version count does not necessarily count the same printings. It is not a guarantee that all versions were found. A prior cached passage without retained source proof is labeled unverified and cannot supply a verified comparison. Source dates and URLs remain visible beside every version.
Campaign money
FEC records retain candidate and committee identifiers, election cycle, filing or transaction identity, and reporting period. Candidate receipts, campaign spending and independent expenditures are separate quantities. Successive versions of a report are not added as though they were separate receipts.
Signed adjustments remain signed. Reporting cutoffs, transfers and amendments can affect comparisons. Selected payment examples and full indexed searches have different scopes; each reader states its selection limits. A missing total stays unknown. A contribution does not establish that it caused a vote.
The finance name lists use the selected FEC cycle. Candidate lists can be narrowed by state, chamber and starting letter; current-member shortcuts require an exact, unambiguous link between a published FEC candidate ID and a serving member ID. Committee types use the FEC’s reported codes, with missing classifications kept separate. A registration is not proof of ballot eligibility. Bounded selectors say when only part of a list is displayed and offer further choices.
Lobbying, personal interests and ethics
A lobbying-to-bill match requires a bill number and corroborating title in the filer’s reported activity. A campaign payer and a lobbying client are connected only through published organization evidence. Each side retains its own dates and original filing. The match does not prove contact with a particular member or explain a vote.
Personal financial disclosures are separate from campaign reports. Reported value ranges are not exact asset values; a changed or missing entry does not by itself establish a purchase or sale. Ethics announcements distinguish reviews, referrals, allegations, committee findings, recommendations and final chamber action. The House and Senate readers keep their committee publications separate and preserve each collection’s own period.
Senate publications include press releases, public letters and annual reports. A publication is not a case count. Different matters involving the same person remain separate; a committee’s closure after losing jurisdiction does not establish exoneration. Catalog publication dates, dates printed on documents and annual reporting years describe different events. A later letter’s reference to a private earlier decision is context, not a newly discovered public publication. Annual reports provide aggregate context without assigning outcomes to named members.
Where an original Senate PDF cannot be retrieved, a retained indexed text copy may supply readable evidence. The reader names its representation, retrieval date and completeness. Its checksum verifies that saved text, not the original PDF. Catalog-only entries leave document contents unresolved; original-file downloads are offered only for verified PDF bytes.
Accountability brief · Financial disclosures · House ethics statements · Senate ethics records
Budgets, districts and public spending
CBO estimates apply to a specific proposal or version and estimate date. Requested or designated project funding, federal award obligations and cash payments are different stages. A matching recipient is a lead to investigate, not proof that an award funded the named congressional project.
District spending totals use Treasury’s reported prime-award transactions within a federal fiscal year. Net obligations retain negative adjustments. Place of performance and recipient location describe overlapping views and must not be added together. Unassigned geography stays separate. Source revisions, district boundaries and reporting delays affect comparisons.
The district award browser follows Treasury transaction pages for contracts, grants, loans, direct payments and other assistance. Each retained page has its own request, retrieval time and checksum. Its CSV reproduces the displayed selection; later pages may come from a later source check, so they are not a single frozen census. An award can have many transactions. Award totals and dated transaction changes are shown separately. Loan face value and subsidy cost are separate from federal obligations.
The geographic filter uses Treasury’s current district boundaries. A source record can also report its originally submitted district. The award detail reader independently checks the award identifier and category; its lifetime totals are not restricted to the fiscal-year or district search that led to it. Street-address fields and unrelated personal fields are omitted from public source summaries and exports.
Census profiles identify the survey year and district geography. Margins of error and unavailable estimates remain visible; county land shares are not population shares.
District spending · Browse award transactions · Budget documents · District profiles
Candidates, ballot choices and results
A candidate registration, official nomination list, ballot statement and certified result establish different facts. The Clerk’s dated nominee publication is separate from later changes made by election authorities. State and local election offices control the ballot for a voter’s address.
Candidate answers and outside scorecards retain the publisher, question or criterion, period and original link. CongressClarity does not present another organization’s ratings as its own. Results identify the contest, stage and source; missing returns are unknown.
The election results reader retains all candidates in the reviewed 2022 FEC and 2024 House Clerk general-election publications, including opponents, write-ins and candidates without a matched FEC ID. Published 2022 runoff and ranked-choice rounds have separate selections. Party ballot lines, candidate totals and aggregate ballot categories remain distinct. A publisher’s recap can include subtotals and separate terms; it is a transcription check, not a count of unique voters. Primaries and separate special-election appendices are outside this collection.
Comparisons use candidates from the same contest and stage. An elected outcome appears only when the source explicitly reports it; the largest number alone does not establish certification. Original publications can be opened from the reader. Historical results do not change the serving roster or establish a 2026 winner.
Election results by race · Candidate finder · Election guide · Outside scorecards
Watches, alerts and follow-up
The CongressClarity follow reader uses selections for members, policy areas and exact bills. It keeps dated actions, text editions, explicit sponsor/cosponsor changes and source-verified roll calls in a persistent history. A member and a topic are combined, not treated as alternatives. Unknown sponsorship dates cannot attach earlier activity to a member. A shared roll call has one identity; a member selection adds that person’s recorded position.
Original source bytes and source versions support each publication. Later source revisions and entries no longer listed remain identified; absence from a source does not prove that Congress reversed an action. Archive pages keep a fixed published generation so newer updates do not move records between pages. The initial history is a baseline, not a stream of newly occurring actions.
Publisher change notifications enter a durable retry queue. Full bill-family comparisons check gaps beyond the notification window; pending checks and unavailable sources remain visible. Feeds reflect the sources this service has verified, not every possible congressional event. A feed reader checks the server that generated its link; the follow page identifies whether that address is public or local to a computer. Source status shows pending checks and the latest verified publication. Feed links contain only public selections, with no account, email address or private notes.
Saved records and private follow-up notes belong to the browser where they were created. An exported calendar reminder includes the selected date, office and public brief link. Review a message before sending it through the office’s own channel.
Official GovInfo RSS feeds track bill text editions in an external feed reader, even after this local app closes. They do not cover every legislative action. Congress.gov offers member, legislation-search and House roll-call alert setup. The subscription guide preserves the member, Congress and topic selected here, explains the filters to choose on the official site, and distinguishes its search from our local text index. An official account and confirmation on Congress.gov are needed for email alerts; CongressClarity does not activate them. A copied subscription list reflects the public bill IDs selected when exported; changing the member or topic does not change that bill set.
Follow members, topics and bills · Saved records · Official subscription options · Bill activity
Speeches, schedules and executive positions
Member profiles bring together dated office publications, public social channels and exact-ID legislative relationships. Office announcements and policy pages remain attributed to the office. Topic counts describe linked measures, not personal motives or a rating of public service. Publication dates are separate from retrieval dates; missing posts and engagement figures remain unknown. A statement links to a legislative measure only when its Congress, type and number can be established.
Posts & videos uses a separate collection of source-identified public accounts. YouTube feed entries must match the mapped channel and author; X posts are collected only when the office website renders an explicit post from its own mapped account. An account link alone is not a stored post. Older retained posts remain available, but these bounded feeds are not a complete archive. Facebook and Instagram links open the original accounts; this collection does not claim to contain their posts.
Most viewed orders posts within one platform and the selected period in this retained collection. Source-reported views are dated snapshots, separate from likes, reach or influence; missing counts remain unknown. This is not a platform-wide popularity ranking or proof that a post went viral. Verified video previews are cached locally; browsing a profile loads no third-party social scripts.
Attributed Congressional Record passages use the named speaker and source context. Inserted third-party text and ambiguous speakers are withheld. A speech and a vote are separate records. Congressional meeting schedules, petitions and published documents retain their official dates and can change.
Administration positions are classified only when a dated official statement explicitly supports or opposes the exact measure. Bill version, chamber and the question being voted on still matter. These relationships do not establish a member’s motive.
Congressional Record · Calendars and petitions · Source directory
Corrections and earlier versions
Imports retain source observations and earlier published revisions. Source corrections can change a displayed record. Failed, incomplete or conflicting checks do not silently replace a verified record with an inferred one. A verification receipt records the app’s checks; it is not certification by the publisher.
To question a record, open its original citation, identify the date and record number, and use Request a correction. Public evidence is sufficient; leave personal contact details out of the correction description.
Vote import revision ledger · Current coverage and original sources