About This Site
The Congressional Accountability Tracker exists because public data about Congress is scattered across dozens of government portals, PDFs, and databases that regular citizens will never have time to dig through.
Our Mission
We pull together voting records, campaign donors, floor speeches, committee work, ethics reports, and district data — all in one place, in plain English. No jargon. No paywalls. No spin.
This site is not affiliated with any political party, candidate, or government agency. We don't editorialize the data — we present it and let you draw your own conclusions. When a member receives millions from the pharmaceutical industry and votes against drug price caps, we show you both facts side by side. What you do with that information is up to you.
The goal is simple: an informed electorate makes better decisions. When voters know how their representatives actually vote, who funds their campaigns, and whether they show up to work — democracy works better.
Data Sources & Methodology
Every number on this site comes from an official government source or established academic dataset. Here's exactly where:
Bill metadata, sponsor information, committee assignments, vote data, and official summaries for all legislation in the 119th Congress.
Full text of floor speeches from the Congressional Record, committee reports, and complete bill text. This is the raw material of what happens on the House and Senate floors.
Campaign finance filings — how much each candidate raises, from whom, and how they spend it. Also independent expenditures by Super PACs and outside groups.
DW-NOMINATE ideology scores calculated from every vote cast. These scores measure where each member falls on the liberal-to-conservative spectrum based on their actual behavior, not their rhetoric.
Misconduct database documenting ethics violations, criminal investigations, and disciplinary actions. Published under CC0 (public domain) license.
District demographics from the American Community Survey — population, income, education, racial composition, and age for every congressional district.
How We Process the Data
Topic classification: Floor speeches and press releases are tagged with topics (healthcare, immigration, defense, etc.) using keyword matching across 27 policy areas. This is deterministic — no AI hallucination.
Tone detection: Statements are classified as bipartisan, partisan attack, urgent, ceremonial, or neutral based on language patterns. This helps identify who works across the aisle and who primarily attacks.
Industry classification: Campaign contributions and independent expenditures are tagged with industries (crypto, oil & gas, pharma, defense, etc.) based on PAC name matching. Bills are tagged based on title and subject keywords. This allows correlation between money received and votes cast.
Plain-language summaries: Bill summaries, key provisions, and committee descriptions are generated from official metadata — bill titles, subjects, and actions — not from external AI. The goal is to translate government language into English anyone can understand.
Freshness: Data pipelines run regularly to pull the latest from each source. The footer shows when each dataset was last updated.
What We Don't Do
We don't rate members as “good” or “bad.” That's your job as a voter. We show you the facts — you decide what matters.
We don't take partisan positions. When we show industry money correlating with votes, we're not claiming corruption — we're showing a pattern that voters should be aware of.
We don't make predictions about individual elections. Our forecast model uses historical patterns and public data, but elections are decided by voters, not algorithms.
Questions? Suggestions? Found an error? Learn how Congress works or start exploring the data.