A public record of what the government does with its votes and its dollars

Enter a ZIP code. The site shows who represents you and how each of them votes.

The pages answer three questions:

1. Who represents me, and how do they vote?
2. What does this law do, and who votes for it?
3. Where does the money go?

The answer comes first. The evidence is underneath it, on the same page.

We save the official file first. Before the site says anything about a law or a vote, it saves its own copy of the government’s file: the law’s text from the Government Publishing Office, and the roll call (the list of how the members voted) from the House Clerk or the Senate. A saved copy shows where it came from and the date we saved it. Where the page has the file’s fingerprint, it shows that too: a short code that changes if a single character of the file changes. When the official source we read does not have a file, the page says “Not published yet”.

We match recorded votes to the members who cast them. A member’s page lists the laws they have a recorded vote on, with their vote beside each one. A law’s page lists the members with a recorded vote on it, with the vote beside the name.

We describe the laws of the current Congress in plain language. Today most accounts are written from the official description of the bill and carry the label “From a secondary source”. A computer also drafts an account from our saved copy of the law’s text and points to the passage behind each statement. A person checks a draft against those passages, statement by statement, before it replaces the account on the law’s page. 0 of 118 accounts have passed that check. An account written from the law’s text carries the label “Not checked yet” until a person finishes that check.

We show a press release only after we save our own copy of it, and the page lists it apart from the official record under the label “From a secondary source”.

An organization’s website address comes from Wikidata’s official-website field when the organization’s name matches exactly, or the site’s editor enters it. The mark for election funding comes from the Federal Election Commission’s list of committees, matched on the exact name.

Ad records come from two public ad libraries: Google Ads Transparency Center and Meta Ad Library. Each record is the platform’s own record of an ad, so it carries the label “From a secondary source” with the library named. We tie an advertiser to an official or an organization only by an FEC number the library gives or by an exact name. We show an ad only after we save our own copy of its picture or its words. Spend and impressions appear as the ranges the library publishes. Meta Ad Library: Not started.

We compare each law with the first published text of its bill. A section of the final law counts as “added along the way” when under 20 percent of its wording appears in that first text. The lists of member-requested spending come from the tables Congress prints for a spending law in its own records, such as the Congressional Record. We count the printed items and add their dollar amounts. A reading of which sections fall outside a law’s stated intent appears only after a person reviews it. The Transparency Score is the share of a law’s dollars that goes to what the law says it is for. We read each dollar amount in the law’s text and sort it by the words printed around it: appropriated, authorized, or left out of the total, such as a limit or a penalty. A person reviews the reading of each section, within the law’s stated purpose or outside it, before a score appears.

A tie in the money records appears only with the filing beside it: a registrant and a country, or a lobbying report and a bill.

Facts carry one of four labels.

A vote is Yes, No, Present or Did not vote, for every member of every party.

The site describes a law by what its text does.

An official appears under the title and name the official record uses. The portrait is the most recent official one we have saved. An official with no saved portrait shows initials.

Party color appears on the party tag only.

• The 543 national seats: 435 House seats, 6 non-voting House seats (5 delegates and the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico), 100 Senate seats, the President and the Vice President.
• Laws and recorded votes from 1995 to today: the saved text of a law and the recorded votes of members, where the official source we read has the file. Plain-language accounts cover the current Congress.
• Executive orders: what the President orders, from the Federal Register, the government’s official daily journal. We are reading this record now.
• Members’ press releases: press releases from members’ official House and Senate websites that name a law or an executive order. We save a copy of each one and label it “From a secondary source”. Read from 539 of 539 members’ sites. 52,161 releases saved, 2,326 of them name a law or an executive order. We found no list of press releases on 1 site.
• Organizations’ press releases: press releases from the websites of organizations named in lobbying reports, where the release names a law or an executive order. We save a copy of each one and label it “From a secondary source”. 1,275 organizations listed, 510 with a website address. Read from 510 of 510 organizations’ sites. 5,714 releases saved, 83 of them name a law or an executive order. 85 sites blocked our request.
• Your ZIP code since 1995: the people who represented it in each Congress we have a ZIP code file for, and how they voted.
• Agency dollars: what an agency may spend, what it commits and what it pays out, for the agencies in the Treasury’s spending record.
• Dollars under a law’s emergency funds: what agencies report committing and paying out under the fund codes the Treasury ties to a law.
• Campaign money: what an official’s campaign reports raising and spending, from the Federal Election Commission. Saved for a few officials so far.
• Lobbying reports that name a bill: the registrant, the client and the amount for the quarter. The lobbying page shows how much of a quarter is read.
• Registered foreign agents: registrants and the countries they act for, from the Justice Department. The foreign agents page shows how much of the record is read.

Some laws pass by voice vote or without objection. Congress records no individual votes for those, and the law’s page says so.

In development: pages for individual donors and committees, and state and local officials.

Found an error? Write to [CONTACT ADDRESS]. We check the claim against the official file, fix the record, and list the correction with its date.

See the corrections to this record

The site remembers your ZIP code in a cookie for one year, so pages can show your officials. To remove it, select Change beside your ZIP code, then “forget this ZIP code”.

The fonts load from Google Fonts, so your browser asks Google for them.

When you enter a street address to find your House district, the site sends it to the U.S. Census Bureau once to find the district. The site does not save it.

When you send an idea for a transparency tool, the site keeps the idea’s text and your name if you give one; it uses your internet address once to limit repeat submissions and does not save it.

When you vote for an idea, the site remembers which ideas you voted for in a cookie for one year.

Ryan McKeen: U.S. Air Force veteran, homeschooler, IT nerd.

This site is paid for by the founder.

The Transparency Party is a project with one mission: empower the voter by removing confusion and ambiguity.

Donations pay for the AI analysis that turns laws and executive orders into plain language, and for building more transparency tools.

$0.00 donated of a $1,100.00 goal. $33.00 spent on AI costs through October 7, 2026.

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