About PORKER
Congress, in plain English.
PORKER makes the work of the United States Congress easy to follow. Every member, every bill, every recorded vote and every earmarked dollar is already public, but it's scattered across dozens of government websites and written in legislative language. PORKER gathers it in one place and explains it in plain English.
What you can do here
- Look up any member. See the bills they sponsor, how often they vote with their party, how many votes they miss, and the projects they requested money for.
- Follow any bill. See where it is in the process, how long each step took, and how the votes went.
- Have your say. Rate members, vote on bills, and watch the ones you care about. Your ratings and votes only show up as part of group totals.
How we work
- Public records only. Every number comes from an official or published public source, listed below.
- Rules, not opinions. Every count, tag and score comes from a fixed written rule, and the same rule applies to every member, whatever their party. The rules are on How we calculate.
- Dates on everything. Each page says when its data was last updated.
- Corrections welcome. If a number looks wrong, email us and we'll check it against the source.
Where the data comes from
| Source | What we use it for |
|---|---|
| Congress.gov (Library of Congress), including its public API | Bills, sponsors, cosponsors, actions, committees, committee meetings, laws |
| Office of the Clerk, U.S. House (clerk.house.gov) | House roll-call votes |
| U.S. Senate (senate.gov) | Senate roll-call votes |
| House Majority Leader floor schedule (docs.house.gov) | What the House plans to vote on each week |
| GovInfo (U.S. Government Publishing Office) | Official bill text |
| Biographical Directory of Congress (bioguide.congress.gov) and the public congress-legislators dataset | Member identities, terms of service and photos |
| Voteview (UCLA) | Each member's left–right voting position |
| Lobbying Disclosure Act filings (lda.gov) | Who lobbied on which bills |
| House and Senate Appropriations earmark tables (Community Project Funding and Congressionally Directed Spending) | The "pork": projects members requested that were funded in enacted spending laws |
| The Downballot (the-downballot.com), used with credit | Presidential results by district, used in Seats at Risk |
| U.S. Census Bureau geocoder | Matching an address or ZIP to a congressional district |
What PORKER is not
PORKER is an independent website. It isn't part of any government, campaign, party or PAC. Votes and ratings on PORKER are citizen opinion, not official ballots or election results.
Contact
Questions, corrections or suggestions: support@porker.vote