Last updated: February 22, 2026.
FederalVoice uses a local-first data pipeline and public-source records to build profile summaries, scorecards, and campaign finance visuals.
Core Inputs
- Congress API v3: member records, roll-call metadata, bill context, and vote history.
- FEC Open API: candidate finance totals, outside spending, and contribution aggregates.
- Local profile metadata: role, office, contact fields, and editorial context from
content/bio/*.md.
Scorecard Methods
- Ideology index: normalized from local roll-call vote polarization in the active Congress window.
- Attendance: percentage of tracked roll-call votes cast vs. missed.
- Party loyalty: alignment with party-majority Yea/Nay outcomes in vote detail snapshots.
- Recent votes shown on profile pages are a display feed and are not used as the score baseline.
Finance Methods
- Receipts, cash on hand, and individual share come from FEC candidate totals.
- Outside spending combines support and oppose totals from schedule E summaries.
- Top occupation/employer values come from FEC schedule A aggregation endpoints.
- Trend chart uses available multi-cycle candidate totals.
Transparency Principles
- Neutral, descriptive language over partisan framing.
- Timestamped refresh metadata on generated snapshot records.
- Public source links surfaced on profile and analytics pages.
- Known data gaps are shown explicitly instead of inferred.
Data Cadence
- Current-member activity snapshots are refreshed regularly through admin scripts.
- Finance enrichment runs on configurable schedules with cycle-aware freshness checks.
- Historical records may rely on curated overrides where federal APIs are incomplete.