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Users of the THOMAS system often ask where they can get voting records for their members of Congress. By "voting record," they may mean all the votes cast by a specific member of Congress over a length of time, or only votes by a member of Congress on a specific issue or set of issues, such as affirmative action or environmental protection. It is important to note that only recorded votes can be tracked for individual members. Many votes are taken in the House and the Senate by voice vote or division vote, where individual members' positions are not ascertainable.
To begin to understand and analyze a member's voting record, you must understand some basics about congressional voting and the legislative process. How Our Laws Are Made, a brief explanation of the legislative process in the House written by the House Parliamentarian, is a good place to begin. For a basic understanding of Senate procedures, consult Enactment of a Law, written by the Senate Parliamentarian.
House Committee on Rules provides a web site devoted to the House legislative process, including Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports on House rules, precedents, and procedures.
The Senate Web site provides a FAQ on the Senate legislative process, and which includes a section on quorum calls.
To find additional sources for more in-depth research, the Senate Web site also includes a general bibliography on Senate procedures, history, and biographies of Senators.
Some Web-based systems also compile member voting records, such as Project Vote Smart, and some partisan or special interest groups rate members based on votes on bills important to their cause. Analyses of voting records range from the scholarly to the blatantly political. The Library of Congress provides a Web page listing Information Sources for Legislative Research.
You can begin to compile your own records for individual members of Congress by searching the THOMAS system -- either through the Bill Summary and Status files, or the Bill Text files -- for bills of interest to you. Once you have compiled a list of bills, you can look at, in the Bill Summary and Status files, the STATUS: Floor/Executive Actions option for each bill to see recorded votes taken on that measure. Roll call vote numbers are linked to the vote detail listing individual member votes on the pages provided by the Clerk of the House or the Secretary of the Senate.
Although more difficult to find, roll call votes for both the House and Senate are published in the Congressional Record which, unlike many commercial publications, contains the results of all roll call votes. They normally occur in the Record at the end of a debate on a measure or amendment, and can be searched by roll call number. If the roll call number is not known, searching by word or phrase in the House or Senate sections of the Record will return articles with debates on bills and amendments, including the vote taken at the conclusion of the debate. A Web-based version of the Congressional Record is available on THOMAS from the 101st through the current Congress.
You can also search the Congressional Record Index in THOMAS, updated biweekly, using the search phrase votes in House or votes in the Senate. The resulting Congressional Record Index entry lists votes alphabetically by description or bill name. Page numbers in the Index entry are linked to articles in the Record containing the roll call vote.
Calendars of the United States House of Representatives and History of Legislation for the 104th and 105th Congresses are searchable through the Government Printing Office's Web-based Access system. The Calendar is useful in identifying bill numbers and the status of legislation.
All of these publications are accessible via the Web for the last few Congresses only, but hard copies of the Congressional Record, Congressional Record Index, and the House Calendars, both current and historical, are available in any of the Federal Depository Libraries.
For House and Senate votes for current and previous Congresses, there are a number of excellent hard-copy commercial publications that are indispensable in compiling voting records. Several of these are: The Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, Congressional Quarterly Almanac, Congressional Roll Call, and the Commerce Clearing House's Congressional Index.
Although you may compile a voting record for your Representative and Senators, roll call and recorded votes on the House and Senate floors, despite their high visibility, are imperfect and imprecise measurements of a member's views. A fuller assessment can be made by considering the member's statements during debate, in speeches on the House or Senate floor, books, newspaper or periodical articles they may have written, press releases and briefings, committee deliberations, and the time a member spends in gathering information on and gaining expertise on issues.