Accountability methodology

VoterIQ presents plain facts from official or public-domain sources, with the same fields for every member of Congress, as of a stated date. It does not score, rank or label people. Party appears only as a neutral text label. The member list is ordered alphabetically by last name (ignoring suffixes such as Jr., and treating hyphens as spaces) and is never ordered by any metric unless you choose to sort a column.

The cadence is the schedule the snapshot is meant to run on. The date actually shown on each page is the date of the data in the file you are reading.

1. Each House roll call is one file from the Clerk of the House. It lists every member then serving, with Yea, Nay, Present or Not Voting.
2. Roll calls on record for a member is the number of roll calls in which the Clerk lists them. A member who joined or left mid-term is only counted for roll calls held while they were listed.
3. Votes recorded is Yea plus Nay plus Present, plus any other answer the Clerk logged, such as a candidate name in a Speaker election.
4. Not Voting is the count of roll calls on which no vote was recorded. The data does not say why.
5. Counts are given for each session of the 119th Congress and in total, always with the number of roll calls and the first and last dates covered. Quorum calls and procedural votes are included because the Clerk numbers them the same way.
6. The Clerk's member codes are matched to Congress bioguide ids through the congress-legislators file. A code that does not match a current member is logged and left out. Matches are never guessed from names.

There are no percentages, charts or comparisons, because a percentage next to a name reads as a grade. The numbers are shown with their denominators so you can judge them yourself.

Each item below is left out because it would require a judgment that the VoterIQ neutrality charter does not allow.

• Ideology or left-right placement scores

  A score turns a set of votes into a judgment about a person. Different methods give different answers, and the charter allows facts from official sources, not a derived verdict.

• "Party loyalty", "votes with party" or bipartisanship figures

  These depend on which votes are counted and how a party position is defined. Both are choices that readers cannot see in the number.

• Rankings, grades, "most" or "least" lists

  Ordering people by a metric is a verdict. The member list is alphabetical by last name. You may sort a column yourself; the page never does it for you.

• Hand-picked "key votes"

  Choosing which votes matter is an editorial decision. Counts here cover every roll call.

• Labels or inferences based on donors

  Funding data is a separate topic, and drawing conclusions from it is characterization. Where campaign finance appears elsewhere on the site, it is shown as plain figures with sources.

• Reasons for missed votes

  The data records only that no vote was recorded. Showing a reason would mean guessing.

• Party colors

  Party is a text label, the same treatment for every party, as the charter requires.

• Senate roll-call counts

  The official Senate roll-call files were not reachable when this snapshot was built, and VoterIQ does not work around a block or fill the gap from other sources. Senate pages show terms, committees and official links only.

• Delegates and the Resident Commissioner are listed, but the Clerk's files may not include them on every roll call. When no record matches, the page says so.
• Members who left Congress are not listed. The list covers current members only.
• A recently seated member has few roll calls on record. That is a fact about the dates, not about the person.
• Committee assignments change during a session. The page shows the assignments in the source on the as-of date.

If a number, date or link is wrong, write to [email protected] with the member's name, what you saw, and where the correct information is published. Errors in the source files are best fixed at the source; we will note the date of any correction. Back to the member list.