Start from the person and the office

Write the legal name, the office, the jurisdiction, and the cycle before you search for a vote. A ballot name and a committee name are often different strings. A shared surname is not an identity. The opposition research page anchors that block to a secretary of state filing or an FEC committee name.

Then ask whether a roll call can exist. A legislator has a voting record only for the chamber that recorded votes under that person's name. A candidate who has never held an office that takes roll calls has an empty voting section. A term of service, a press release about a bill, and a cosponsorship are not votes. A prior office, a local board, or no record at all are three different results. The file says which one the search produced.

Office decides the shelf. A U.S. House vote, a U.S. Senate vote, a state-chamber vote, and a city council minute are different documents. Candidate research by race groups the public profiles by office. Candidate research by state groups them by place. Pick the person from the hub, then open the roll call for that chamber.

Open the congressional roll call

For the U.S. House, start at the Office of the Clerk's roll call votes. Member names are listed on the Clerk's member pages. For the U.S. Senate, roll calls are published at the Senate's legislative votes page. Congress.gov is the catalog of bills, members, and congressional data. Its public API is documented at api.congress.gov. Use the page that shows this member, this question, this date, and this position.

A citation names four things the page itself prints: the chamber, the bill or the measure number, the date of the roll call, and the recorded position. Add the question the clerk called, in the words on the page. A link to a member biography, or to a bill summary with no roll call, does not carry the position. A bill summary with no roll call is someone else's description of the measure. A roll call with no bill text is a yes or a no.

When the sentence is about what the bill did, open the bill text beside the roll call. Congress.gov is the catalog for that text. A later amendment does not rewrite a roll call that was taken on the earlier text. If both matter, cite both, and say which text was pending when the vote was taken.

Read the question before the position

The position is Yea, Nay, or a recorded non-vote such as present or not voting, in the words the roll call uses. The question is the line that says what that position answered. Final passage of a bill is one question. A motion about how the chamber considers the bill is another. Describing both as "voted for the bill" or "voted against the bill" erases the difference the clerk wrote down.

Read the question for the motion it names. These questions are procedural. They decide how the chamber handles a measure, and they are not final passage:

  • A motion to proceed, a motion to table, or a motion to recommit.
  • Cloture, the previous question, or a motion to adjourn.
  • A quorum call, a call by states, or a motion to reconsider.
  • A suspension of the rules, a special rule, or a vote on the rule.
  • A resolution whose title only provides for consideration of another measure. The same words, "on agreeing to the resolution," on any other title are a vote on that resolution.

An amendment question stays an amendment. It records a position on that amendment, and it is a different document from final passage of the underlying bill. A question recorded as passage, as agreeing to the bill, the resolution, or the conference report, or as a joint resolution or a nomination, is final passage of that question. A question that matches none of those patterns stays unclassified. The file quotes the question and does not promote it into a category the roll call did not support.

OppIntell uses that same split on a stored roll call. A motion to proceed, a motion to table, a motion to recommit, cloture, the previous question, a motion to adjourn, a quorum call, a call by states, a motion to reconsider, a suspension of the rules, or a special rule is classified procedural. A resolution is procedural when its title only provides for consideration. An amendment question stays an amendment. Passage, agreeing to the bill, the resolution, or the conference report, a joint resolution, and a nomination are final passage. Anything else stays unclassified.

A comparison of a public statement with a vote is kept only when that vote is final passage, both sides are stored records, and the quoted words are a verbatim slice of the stored text. A procedural vote is not turned into that comparison. An amendment vote is not turned into it either. When a procedural vote is shown beside another stored record, the profile labels it, beginning with the words "Procedural vote," and the note says it is not final passage. The check of a voting record against public statements is the page for that comparison. This page stops at the roll call.

State chambers and local boards

A state legislator's votes are on the state record, not on Congress.gov. Open the state hub and use the links under Legislative bills and votes. Those links are the official pages confirmed in the public-records compilation verified on 2026-10-16. The compiled list is on the methodology page, and it can be downloaded as JSON or CSV.

When that category has no link, the hub prints a gap note: no live official page was confirmed for that category on the verification date. The voting section stays empty until a roll call for this person is opened. Another state's legislative site does not fill the gap. A news account of a vote is a lead. It becomes a vote line when the chamber's own record is in hand.

A city council, a county board, or a school board minute belongs only when the document names this person and this question. There is no national portal for those minutes. The state hub's candidate-filing and election-results links can confirm that the person held the seat. They do not contain the vote. Cite the minutes, the date, and the question, or leave the section empty.

What the file keeps

One vote line contains the chamber, the measure, the date, the question, the position, and the URL of the page that shows them. A second line can hold the bill text, with its own URL, when the sentence uses that text. A third line can hold a hearing transcript or a committee report when the sentence uses that document. The lines stay separate so a later reader can see which document supplied which fact.

An empty section is a result. Write that no roll call naming this person was found, and name the pages that were opened. A profile covers 24,000+ U.S. candidates. A voting-record section on an OppIntell profile lists roll calls that name the person and cites the record for each vote. When no roll call names the person, the section is omitted. A term of service is not added in its place.

The record types around a vote, including finance filings and court records, are mapped on opposition research sources.

Related guides

Questions researchers ask

Where do I open a congressional roll call?

House roll calls are on the Office of the Clerk site at https://clerk.house.gov/Votes. Senate roll calls are published by the Senate at https://www.senate.gov/legislative/votes_new.htm. Congress.gov, at https://www.congress.gov/, is the bill and member catalog, and its public API is documented at https://api.congress.gov/. Cite the page that shows the member, the question, the date, and the position.

What is a procedural vote?

A procedural vote decides a motion about how the chamber considers a measure: a motion to proceed, a motion to table, a motion to recommit, cloture, the previous question, a motion to adjourn, a quorum call, or a special rule. It is a different question from final passage of the bill. The roll call names the question. Read that question before you describe the position.

What if the candidate has never held an office that takes roll calls?

The voting section stays empty. A term of service is not a vote. A prior office, a local board, or no voting record at all are three different results, and the file says which one the search produced.

Does a state legislator use Congress.gov?

No. A state chamber records its own votes. Open the Legislative bills and votes links on that state's hub. Those links come from the official public-records compilation. A gap note means that verification pass did not confirm a live official page.

Start from the public record

OppIntell builds source-cited candidate profiles from public records. If you want a file a second person can check, use the contact form on the opposition research page.

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