Terms, privacy and disclaimers

The short version

This summary is for convenience; the full text below is what applies.

• mycongress.vote is an independent, nonpartisan website. It is not a government website and is not affiliated with Congress, any member of Congress, party, campaign or government agency.
• It is not an official voting resource. To register, find where to vote or see your ballot, go to vote.gov or your state or local election office.
• Bill summaries, "What it does, in detail" and "Where they stand" are written by AI from public records. They are checked, but they can still be wrong or incomplete. The official records, linked on every page, are what count.
• Nothing here is legal, voting, financial or other professional advice, or an endorsement of or opposition to any candidate, officeholder, party or position.
• No accounts, ads or cookies. We count visits anonymously, don't sell or share anything about you, and send nothing about you to AI companies.
• See a mistake? Tell us through our public report page and we'll fix or remove it.

1. Not a government or voting site

mycongress.vote (the "Site", "we", "us") is run independently. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or connected to the United States Congress, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Library of Congress, the Government Publishing Office, the Congressional Research Service, any member of Congress or their office, any political party, campaign or political committee, or any federal, state or local government agency. The ".vote" in our name is part of a web address; it does not make the Site an election authority.

The Site does not register voters, tell you where or when to vote, show your ballot, or report election results. For those, use vote.gov, usa.gov/election-office or your state or local election office.

2. Nonpartisan, no endorsements

The Site reports what Congress does: bills, where they stand, and how members voted. It does not endorse, support or oppose any candidate, officeholder, political party, bill or position, and nothing on it is meant to influence any election. The Site is not authorized or paid for by any candidate, candidate's committee, political party or political committee. We do not accept money from candidates, campaigns, parties or political committees to publish, change or remove anything.

Naming a member of Congress, a party or a bill, showing a member's official photo, or linking to a member's official website or contact page does not mean they endorse the Site, or that we endorse them. Reactions are anonymous picks from a fixed set of emoji and stickers, just for fun: they are the opinions of visitors, not ours, and they are not a poll or a measure of public opinion.

3. AI-written content

Much of the text on the Site is generated by artificial intelligence ("AI") models, currently from DeepSeek and Google (Gemini), working only from public records: bill texts and official summaries from the Library of Congress and the Government Publishing Office, and roll-call votes from the Clerk of the House and the U.S. Senate. This includes the plain-English bill summaries, "What it does, in detail" on bill pages, and "Where they stand" on member pages. Those sections are marked as written by AI.

Before AI-written text is shown, it goes through automated checks: our code checks it against the records (for example its numbers, dates and citations), and an AI check compares its claims with the records. For "What it does, in detail" and "Where they stand", that check is done by a second, different AI model. Text that fails is not shown. These checks reduce errors; they cannot rule them out. AI can misread a bill, miss or misstate a provision, describe a vote's effect wrongly, or leave out context, and a summary can fall out of date as a bill changes.

"Where they stand" is an automated reading of the public record of one Congress: it describes what the bills a member voted on, wrote or cosponsored do, and whether the member's votes and bills supported or opposed them. It is not a statement of fact about any person's beliefs, motives, character, intentions or future conduct, it is not a statement by the member, and it does not consider speeches, campaigns or news coverage. Every position it lists is followed by the votes and bills it rests on, so you can check them yourself.

4. Accuracy and no advice

The Site's data comes from official sources, but it can be delayed, incomplete or wrong at the source, and our own processing can introduce errors: a vote attributed to the wrong member, a bill's status that has since changed, a count, age, committee or district that is out of date. Figures we calculate ourselves, such as how often a member votes with most of their party or misses votes, are simple counts of roll calls and leave out context; members miss votes for many reasons, including illness, family and official business. Ages are calculated from birth dates in public records. If the Site and an official source disagree, the official source controls.

Nothing on the Site is legal, financial, tax, investment, voting or other professional advice. Don't rely on the Site alone for any decision, including how to vote or whether to contact an official; check the official record, which is linked from every bill and vote.

5. Corrections

If you think something on the Site is wrong, misleading or unfair, including if you are a member of Congress, work for one, or are described on the Site, tell us through our public report page or our public report page (for anything sensitive, open a report asking us to contact you, without the details; a private address will be listed here). Please include the page's address and what you believe is wrong.

We read every report. When a report shows an error, we correct the content, regenerate it, or remove it until it can be redone, and we fix the underlying data where the error came from our processing. We may also remove or change any content at any time, for any reason, without notice. Reports made through the report page are public GitHub issues that anyone can see: don't include personal information there.

6. Terms of use

Using the Site

You may read, share, link to and quote the Site for any lawful purpose. When you quote AI-written text, don't present it as an official statement of Congress or of any member, and please link to the page it came from. Gentle automated access is fine if it respects robots.txt and keeps to a modest rate.

You agree not to: use the Site in violation of any law; disrupt or overload the Site or the servers behind it, or try to probe, scan or break their security; manipulate reactions or counts, for example with scripts, bots or many devices or networks; alter the Site's content and present it as ours, or present anything from the Site as the official position of Congress, a member or a government agency; or use our name or logo to suggest that we endorse you, a candidate or a cause.

Links to other sites

The Site links to sites we don't control, including Congress.gov, GovInfo, members' official websites and social media accounts, GitHub and Ko-fi. We aren't responsible for their content, availability or privacy practices.

Disclaimer of warranties

THE SITE AND ALL CONTENT ON IT, INCLUDING AI-WRITTEN CONTENT, ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY WARRANTIES OF ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, TIMELINESS, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SITE WILL BE AVAILABLE, UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE OR ERROR-FREE.

Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SITE AND ITS OPERATOR WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF DATA, PROFITS, GOODWILL OR REPUTATION, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SITE OR ITS CONTENT, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THEIR POSSIBILITY. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SITE WILL NOT EXCEED FIFTY U.S. DOLLARS ($50). SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW CERTAIN LIMITATIONS, SO SOME OF THE ABOVE MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

Indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless the Site and its operator from any claims, damages, losses and expenses, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of your use of the Site in violation of these terms or of any law or third-party right.

Disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the United States and of the state in which the Site's operator resides, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Before filing any claim, you agree to contact us and try in good faith to resolve it informally for at least 30 days. Any claim must be brought in the state or federal courts serving the county in which the Site's operator resides, and you consent to their jurisdiction. To the extent the law allows, claims may only be brought individually, not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective or representative action, and must be brought within one year after the claim arose.

Changes and general terms

We may change these terms at any time by posting a new version here; the date at the top shows the latest one, and using the Site after a change means you accept it. We may change, suspend or stop the Site, or any part of it, at any time. If any part of these terms can't be enforced, the rest stays in effect. Our not enforcing a term is not a waiver of it. These terms are the entire agreement between you and us about the Site.

7. Privacy

We built the Site to know as little about you as possible. There are no accounts, no ads, no cookies, no advertising or analytics companies, no fingerprinting, and nothing is ever sold or shared for advertising.

Anonymous usage counts

To learn what people read and tap, your browser sends short anonymous events to our own server: which bills, members and sections were viewed or opened and for how long, taps on buttons and links (such as Share, Follow and tabs), topic tags chosen, the words typed into search, the website you came from (its domain only), your device type (phone, tablet or desktop), window size, dark mode and browser language, and errors the page hit. Events carry a random ID that exists only in memory for that one page load. To count daily visitors without cookies, the server combines your IP address and browser identification with a secret random key that is replaced and deleted every day, and keeps only the resulting scrambled code; your IP address is never stored, and visits can't be linked across days. Raw events are deleted after 45 days. Daily summaries (counts, and the search words people used, with anything that looks like an email address or a long number removed) may be kept longer; they contain nothing that identifies a visitor. Nothing is sent at all if your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal, and automated browsers aren't counted.

Reactions

If you add a reaction, your browser sends the bill, the reaction and a random ID created on your device, so each device can react once per emoji. The server stores only a scrambled (keyed hash) form of that ID, never the ID itself, and uses a scrambled form of your IP address, kept only in the server's memory, to limit how many reactions one network can add per hour. Reaction counts are public; who reacted is not.

Stored on your device

The Site uses your browser's local storage, not cookies, to remember the members you follow, the reactions you added, the random reaction ID above, and whether you closed the welcome note. These stay on your device: the only one ever sent is the reaction ID, and only with a reaction (following or unfollowing a member is counted like any other tap, as described above). When you look up your members by ZIP code, the lookup happens in your browser: your ZIP code is not sent to us. You can erase all of it by clearing this site's data in your browser settings.

Our hosts and other services

The Site is hosted by GitHub Pages, and our reaction and counting server runs on Fly.io. Like any web host, they process IP addresses and request details to deliver pages and keep them secure, under their own privacy policies; we don't use their logs to identify or track visitors. Fonts, icons and emoji are served from the Site itself. Links you choose to follow, such as Ko-fi, GitHub, Congress.gov or members' websites, take you to services with their own privacy policies.

AI companies

We send AI companies only public records (bill texts, official summaries and roll-call votes) to write and check summaries. Nothing about visitors is ever sent to them.

Children

The Site is for a general audience and is not directed to children under 13. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children.

Your choices and rights

Because we don't collect information that identifies you, there is generally nothing we can look up, correct, export or delete about you. You can stop the usage counts by turning on Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, and clear everything stored on your device through your browser settings. We do not sell or share personal information, and we don't use it for targeted advertising or profiling, as those terms are used in California and other state privacy laws. The Site is operated in the United States for a U.S. audience; if you visit from elsewhere, including the European Union or the United Kingdom, our lawful basis for the anonymous counts and abuse protection is our legitimate interest in running, securing and improving the Site. Questions or requests: our public report page (for anything sensitive, open a report asking us to contact you, without the details; a private address will be listed here).

Security and changes

We use reasonable measures to protect the Site and the little data it keeps, but no method is perfectly secure. If we change how we handle data, we'll update this section and the date at the top before the change takes effect.

8. Tips

The Site is free. Tips through Ko-fi are voluntary gifts that help pay for hosting and AI costs. They are not tax-deductible (the Site is not a charity), not political contributions, not payment for any product or service, and they give no say over what the Site publishes. Payments are handled by Ko-fi and its payment partners under their terms and privacy policies; we never see your card details. Tips are non-refundable except where Ko-fi's policies or the law require otherwise. We will refuse any tip offered on the condition that we publish, change or remove anything.

9. Sources, credits and copyright

• Bills, their status, texts, cosponsors and official summaries: the Library of Congress (Congress.gov and the Congressional Research Service) and the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GovInfo).
• Votes: the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
• Member details, contact pages, social accounts, committees and birth dates: the congress-legislators project (public domain dedication).
• Member photos: official portraits from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (bioguide.congress.gov); works of the U.S. government are generally in the public domain.
• ZIP code to district lookup: U.S. Census Bureau relationship files for the 119th Congress. A ZIP code can cross district lines, so the lookup may show more than one district.
• Icons: Phosphor Icons, MIT License.
• Emoji: Twemoji, © Twitter, Inc and other contributors, licensed under CC BY 4.0; combined into a single file for this site.
• Fonts: Atkinson Hyperlegible, Bricolage Grotesque and IBM Plex Mono, under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Government records are generally in the public domain. The Site's design, logo, code and original text are ours, to the extent they are protected by law; you may quote and share them with a link back. Names and marks of Congress, government agencies and other services belong to their owners, and their mention does not imply any affiliation.

If you believe something on the Site infringes your copyright, send a notice to our public report page (for anything sensitive, open a report asking us to contact you, without the details; a private address will be listed here) with: the work you believe is infringed; the material on the Site and its address; your name and contact details; a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorized by the owner, its agent or the law; and a statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act for the owner. We will review it and remove material where appropriate.

10. Accessibility

We want the Site to work for everyone and aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AA: readable type, sufficient contrast, full keyboard use (J and K move between bills, / searches, Esc closes), text alternatives, and less motion when your device asks for reduced motion. If anything on the Site doesn't work for you, tell us through our public report page (for anything sensitive, open a report asking us to contact you, without the details; a private address will be listed here) and we'll fix it or get you the information another way.

11. Contact

Corrections and problems with the Site: our public report page.
Legal notices, privacy and copyright requests: our public report page (for anything sensitive, open a report asking us to contact you, without the details; a private address will be listed here).