What this site promises, and what it does not

The Vote Files is a public archive of congressional roll-call votes and presidential documents, reproduced from official government records. Reading it costs nothing and requires no account. Using the site means accepting the terms on this page.

These terms may change. The version on this page is the one in force, and the date below is the date it last changed.

Works of the United States government are in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. section 105. Roll-call records, tallies and bill texts are works of the United States government, and this site reproduces them as facts of the public record. Every measure page links the official source so any figure here can be checked against the government record directly.

A small number of fields are computed by this site rather than reproduced. They are listed and explained on the sources page, and they are labeled wherever they appear.

Some pages show headlines published by news outlets. Those headlines belong to the outlets that wrote them and are reproduced exactly as published, with the outlet named beside them and a link to the original article. The Vote Files does not write, edit, shorten or rephrase them, and showing a headline is not agreement with it.

The Vote Files does not rate the truthfulness or credibility of linked articles. The recorded-vote Claim vs. Record pilot compares only five reader-selected fields with one exact stored roll call. It does not read or evaluate an article, authenticate a quotation, or assess facts outside the cited record.

Outlet headlines and feed clips are not rewritten by artificial intelligence. Software groups outlet items and works out which public file an item may refer to; uncertain matches are withheld.

Separately labeled Vote Files newsroom treatments contain original Vote Files wording, including the public question, context, and a bounded description of what selected government or court records support. Automated systems, including language models, may assist discovery, research planning, and drafting. Reporting, search results, and generated text are leads rather than proof. A treatment can enter public state only after its required scope, primary-record, contrary-record, later-action, identity, gap, and freshness checks pass. That process does not make the treatment exhaustive or legal advice.

The pilot can compare a selected member, Congress, chamber, roll-call number, and asserted cast with the member-level cast stored for that exact roll call. A matching cast is labeled supported by the record. A different allow-listed cast is labeled contradicted by the record. If no member-level cast is on file, the result is not established by this record; absence is not treated as a contradictory vote.

A result addresses only the selected roll call. It does not establish why a member voted, whether the member generally supported a bill, what a policy did, or whether a speaker or article is truthful. Readers should inspect the exact vote question and cited source before relying on the comparison.

Outlets are grouped as left of center, center, or right of center. Those positions are ours. They describe an outlet's editorial orientation and its audience. They are not a statement about whether an outlet is accurate, honest or reliable, and this site does not rate the credibility of any news organization.

Positions are assigned to the outlet once, by hand, and never inferred article by article. The full list, and the reasoning, is on the sources page. Reasonable people disagree about where any given outlet sits, and disagreement about a position is not a claim that anything on this site is false.

This site links to government records and to news articles published elsewhere. Those pages are not under our control. The Vote Files is not responsible for their content, their accuracy, their availability, or what happens to a reader who follows a link, and a link is not an endorsement.

The public archive remains free. Public support payments are currently closed, and the support page presents no public PayPal checkout or active payment button.

No one-time or recurring public payment can be started through Vote Files while the closed notice is displayed. If public payments open later, PayPal will be the only payment processor and the checkout terms and privacy disclosure will change with that opening.

A participant in an authorized private payment test, or anyone with a payment, refund, duplicate-charge, cancellation, or receipt question, can use the payment category on the tracked request desk. Do not submit card, bank, or PayPal credentials.

This site is provided as it is and as it is available, without warranty of any kind, express or implied. That includes any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, or non-infringement.

The archive is built from sources that are themselves occasionally corrected. This site does not warrant that it is complete, current, uninterrupted, or free of error, and every page carries the date of the data it was built from, currently 2026-09-15.

To the fullest extent the law allows, The Vote Files is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive loss arising out of the use of this site or reliance on anything published here, including any decision made on the basis of a record, a figure, or a linked article.

Nothing in these terms limits any liability that cannot be limited by law.

A correction is not a favor asked of this site. It is the point of it. If a figure here disagrees with the official record, or a headline is attached to the wrong measure or the wrong member, submit it through the tracked request desk. The request receives a reference code and is checked against the controlling source before a public change.

When the House or Senate corrects a vote after the fact, the archive refreshes from the official sources and the date on every page moves with it.

A news outlet that does not want its headlines shown here can submit the headline-or-outlet category through the tracked request desk. Identity and scope are reviewed before a feed change. Nothing about this site depends on carrying any particular outlet.

The government records reproduced here are public domain and nobody needs permission to use them. Headlines and article text belong to the outlets that published them. The design, the code, the computed fields and the arrangement of this site are ours.

This site is independent and nonpartisan. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any government body, political party, campaign or candidate. It uses no official seals.

Nothing on this site is legal, financial, electoral or professional advice of any kind.