About Congress Report Card
A plain, nonpartisan report card for every member of the U.S. House and Senate, built only from the public record.
Why this site exists
Most people know their members of Congress mainly through campaign ads, news coverage and party labels. It is surprisingly hard to answer simple questions about what a member actually does: How often do they show up to vote? Do they write legislation? Does any of it go anywhere? The answers are all public, but they are scattered across government databases that are hard to search and harder to compare.
Congress Report Card puts those answers in one place, in a form anyone can read in a few seconds: a letter grade, the three scores behind it and the numbers behind each score. Every current senator, representative and delegate gets a report card, and every report card is built the same way.
Who runs it
Congress Report Card is an independent project created and run by Darrell Burch. It launched in September 2026. It is not affiliated with Congress, any political party, any campaign, any advocacy group or any news organization, and it receives no money from any of them.
What makes it nonpartisan
- No votes are scored as right or wrong. The grades measure whether a member voted, not how. A yes and a no count the same.
- No issue positions count. A bill earns points for how far it got, not for what it says.
- One set of rules for everyone. Every member is graded by the same formula, and members are compared only with others in their own chamber. Grades are never adjusted by hand or changed on request.
- Everything can be checked. The methodology explains every step, and every number links back to its public source on Voteview or Congress.gov.
The grades do reflect some structural features of Congress, such as the advantage the majority party has in moving bills. Those effects are explained openly in the articles rather than hidden or corrected with judgment calls.
Where the data comes from
The data is rebuilt automatically every night from public sources: member rosters from the congress-legislators project, roll-call votes from Voteview at UCLA, legislation from the official Congress.gov API run by the Library of Congress, and ZIP code districts from the Census Bureau. The code that builds the data and calculates the grades is published on GitHub, so anyone can see exactly how it works.
What you'll find here
- Every member's grade, searchable by name, state or ZIP code, with adjustable grading weights.
- A report card page for each member, with their attendance, bills, how they compare with their chamber and state, and a shareable image and badge.
- State pages that put each state's senators and representatives side by side.
- Articles that explain what the numbers show about the current Congress.
- A weekly digest of votes missed, grade changes and bills that became law.
How the site is paid for
The site is free to use and is supported by advertising from Google AdSense. Advertisers have no influence over the grades or the articles, and political ad categories are blocked so that ads on the site don't promote candidates or causes. The privacy policy explains what advertising cookies are used and how to opt out.
Corrections and feedback
If a number looks wrong, please get in touch with the member's name, the number in question and, if possible, a link to the public record that shows the right figure. Mistakes in the site's own code are fixed, and every change is visible in the public code history. Errors in the source data are passed on to the source. Suggestions for improving the grading method are welcome too.