How the ledger is kept

Incumbent keeps the voting record for every sitting member of the House and Senate. The question is the same in October and in March: on the votes that moved policy, did this member vote yes or no? A race rating is a seasonal note. The tally is the record.

During an election the front of the site is the people on the ballot — incumbents seeking another term, not retirees, not members who already lost a primary, not challengers. Appointed senators running in a special election are included. Open seats are listed so the map is honest about who is not running. After the polls close, those votes stay. A campaign, a PAC, a reporter, or a constituent can still open the same tally and see what the member did.

Opponents on the ballot card: each member is shown against the major-party nominee running against them. Third-party and independent candidates are listed too when no major-party candidate is running against the member, or when any single poll of the November race shows them at 10% or more (counting voters who lean toward them), whoever paid for it. The ballot card cites that poll: the pollster, the fieldwork dates, the candidate’s share, a link, and who paid for or released it, so a campaign or party poll is labeled as one. A candidate with no such poll is not listed, unless the race has no major-party opponent. Names and party labels come from each state’s certified candidate list.

Scorecards are kept one Congress at a time. When a new Congress is sworn in on January 3 of an odd year, every member starts a fresh scorecard, newly elected and returning members alike, and it stays empty until that Congress takes scored votes. Earlier Congresses stay on each member’s page as history, including for members who have left. Roll calls the floor watch picks up in a new Congress are shown as pending review and count toward no one’s scorecard until an editor marks them scored. The Iran war-powers roll calls of the 119th Congress are also listed as pending review: they are shown for the record and count toward no one’s scorecard, party breaks, or party unity.

The vote file starts with a curated set of key roll calls from the 119th Congress: the two reconciliation bills, Laken Riley, HALT Fentanyl, the GENIUS stablecoin act, the 2025 rescissions package, NDAA, the CR that ended the 43-day shutdown, TAKE IT DOWN, the SAVE Act cloture, the CLARITY Act cloture of September 15, Secure America, the FY2027 CR, and the walk-in cooler efficiency CRA. Each entry names its official roll call (Clerk of the House or Senate LIS), and every tracked member’s position, chamber total, date, and result is generated from that roll-call XML — nothing is estimated. TAKE IT DOWN passed the Senate by unanimous consent, so no senator has a position on it.

A floor watch then scores new passage, cloture, conference, and motion-to-proceed votes on numbered bills as soon as the Senate LIS or Clerk of the House posts them. That is how a roll like the CLARITY Act cloture lands in the tally without waiting on a hand-picked list. Nominations, amendments, and motions to table stay off the scored ledger. Individual positions follow the public record. The site reads those files every few minutes and overwrites a member’s yea, nay, or miss when the official XML names them. Members outside that hand-checked set do not get a guessed vote. Their tally is only a position the Clerk or the Senate file names. If a feed is down, the curated file stays up. A checker runs on the same cycle. Differences are listed on the corrections page, and the tally on the site uses the official position. Missed votes are recorded as NV. This is not a complete floor history, and it is not an ideology score.

“Broke with party” means the member’s yea or nay did not match the majority of their own party’s yea and nay votes on that roll call. Independents are measured against the party they caucus with; an independent who caucuses with neither is measured against the majority party. Party unity is the share of cast votes that matched.

Race ratings are the Cook Political Report’s: House as of Oct 30, 2026 and Senate as of Oct 30, 2026, on Cook’s seven-point scale. They will move. The votes will not.

The vote file and the briefing are free for every voter. Supporters keep them that way, and newsroom, campaign, and PAC licenses pay for the right to republish. No campaign, party, or PAC can buy a better tally, a quieter nay, or a featured slot. Questions go to the contact page.