Follow the money: method
Scope: every voting and nonvoting member of the House and every senator, indexed by chamber, district or state, and Congress. The initial sample covers one district. Freeze the evidence window and mark vacancies, absent votes, conflicts and changes of office.
How scores are calculated
- Publish a bill’s text, version, date, stage and Checklist tags before counting votes. Mark each tag as advances, conflicts, mixed or unscored, with the relevant text. Bill score: advances divided by advances plus conflicts. Show the denominator and mixed or missing tags separately.
- Count substantive recorded votes for or against aligned provisions. Track absences and procedural votes separately. For each issue, publish official statements with date and context in a separate column. Statements alone establish a stated position.
- For a covered issue, compute vote alignment as aligned votes divided by aligned plus opposed votes. Show statement alignment alongside it. Mixed and missing records are excluded from the denominator. Calculate statement alignment using the same rule. Publish an overall member score only when all applicable Checklist areas have verified vote and statement evidence. Within each area average both components, then give all areas equal weight.
- Voter guides show the issue scores, evidence and coverage. Funding and trades provide context and do not change alignment scores. Publish changes in the corrections log.
Funding, lobbying and trades
Rank industries from itemized FEC donor employer and occupation data for a fixed cycle. Separate PACs, individuals and unitemized receipts, document the mapping, remove duplicate amended filings and show the unclassified share. Match lobbying filings to a bill or issue. Report trades with filing date, owner type, reported range and amendments. A filing alone does not prove influence or wrongdoing.
FEC · Individual contributions · U.S. Senate · LDA disclosures · House Clerk · Financial disclosures · U.S. Senate · Financial disclosures