Same formula for every card · Senate sheet (PDF)
How a card is built
Front is identity. Back is a season line — votes and money as stats, not a grade. Every member of a chamber gets the same card, the same window, and the same formulas. If a number cannot be rebuilt from a .gov record, it does not go on the card.
Two chambers
The Senate cards cover 100 sitting senators. The House cards cover the 433 sitting voting representatives. Delegates and the Resident Commissioner are not in the House set: they do not have a regular floor vote. The House has 435 voting seats; 2 are vacant this vintage, so they have no card. Stats are never mixed across chambers. A House PL is not comparable to a Senate PL as a ranking — different vote universes, same formulas.
Vintage
Senate (100 cards). Identity, votes, laws, and money are computed from the sources below. The banner prints the vintage. This pull uses Senate LIS roll-calls through 8 August 2026 and FEC cycle-2026 filings through 12 August 2026. Vote window: 119th Congress, from noon on 3 January 2025 through the vintage date, only for days the senator was seated.
House (433 cards). Same formulas. Recorded votes are Clerk of the House XML for calendar 2025 and 2026 (119th Congress). This pull uses those roll-calls through 1 September 2026 (650 recorded, 510 contested) and FEC cycle-2026 filings through 21 August 2026, for each member’s principal House committee.
SM this vintage: unitemized individuals are inferred as FEC weball individual receipts minus itemized Schedule A (transaction types 15/15E, memo-X excluded), because the OpenFEC totals feed is rate-limited on the public demo key. The fraction is still unitemized ÷ individual.
Card front — roster
| Field | Rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Name, party, state, class | Ballot party as listed by the chamber. Senate class I / II / III maps to the next regular election (2030 / 2026 / 2028). House cards print state and district (AL for at-large). | Senate.gov; Bioguide |
| Senate since, rank, role | Year first seated in that chamber; Senate senior/junior in the state delegation; floor title if the chamber lists one (Speaker, floor leader, whip). | Senate.gov; Congress.gov API |
| Committees | Standing-committee assignments, up to three on the card, chamber names as published. | Committee roster / Congress.gov member record |
| Portrait | Official Congressional photograph. Public domain. | Senate / House photo offices; Bioguide |
Card back — votes
Universe: that chamber’s recorded (roll-call) floor votes only. Voice votes and division votes are not in the official feed and are not estimated. Senate source: Legislative Information System XML, posted by the Secretary of the Senate. House source: Clerk of the House XML. House Aye/No is treated as Yea/Nay for PL, MS, and X; the ledger still prints the Clerk’s original word.
Contested vote. A roll-call where the losing side is at least 10% of (Yea + Nay). Present and Not Voting do not count toward that 10%. Near-unanimous votes are dropped so party-line and cross-party rates are not inflated by naming post offices.
Caucus, not ballot party, for PL and X. Independents are scored with the caucus through which they take committee assignments. In the 119th Congress that is the Democratic caucus for Sanders (VT) and King (ME). The card front still reads Independent.
| Stat | Formula | Source |
|---|---|---|
| MS missed | Not Voting ÷ recorded votes while seated. “Present” is not a miss. Votes before swearing-in are excluded. | Senate roll-calls; Clerk of the House |
| PL party-line | On contested votes where the senator cast Yea or Nay and their caucus had a majority: share matching that caucus majority. Caucus ties are dropped. | Same LIS roll-calls |
| X cross-party | On contested votes where the two caucus majorities disagree and the senator voted: share matching the other caucus. This is not an interest-group score. | Same LIS roll-calls |
| LAW | Count of bills or joint resolutions the senator sponsored (not merely cosponsored) that became public law this Congress. | Congress.gov (sponsor + Became Law) |
Card back — money
Universe: the member’s principal campaign committee for FEC cycle 2026 (Senate committee for senators, House committee for representatives). Leadership PACs, party committees, joint-fundraising committees, and super PACs are not folded into these four stats (that would double-count transfers). Outside spending for or against the senator is a ledger line, labeled as spending by others.
| Stat | Formula | Source |
|---|---|---|
| $CY raised | Total receipts of the authorized chamber committee this cycle. | FEC / OpenFEC committee totals |
| PAC | Contributions from other political committees ÷ total contributions. Transfers and offsets are kept out of both sides of the fraction. | FEC committee totals |
| HOM in-state | Itemized individual receipts with a contributor state matching the senator’s state ÷ all itemized individual receipts that include a state. Unitemized gifts have no address, so HOM is among itemized individuals only. | FEC Schedule A |
| SM small-dollar | Unitemized individual contributions ÷ all individual contributions. This is the FEC’s own under-$200 field. It replaces a homemade “top 50 donors” concentration stat. | FEC committee totals |
Ledger — the same extra facts, every card
- Sample ballot. The same recorded votes for everyone in that chamber, chosen for public salience (appropriations, a major authorizing bill, a contested nomination or war-powers vote, a widely covered amendment) — not to move anyone’s average. Senate rows cite LIS vote numbers. House rows cite Clerk roll-call numbers and year.
- Named contributors. The five largest itemized receipts to the authorized committee, using the name as filed. No industry recoding. FEC employer text is messy; we will not invent “Securities 22%.”
- STOCK Act. A pointer to the filing system, not a judgment of trading. Senate: efdsearch.senate.gov. House: disclosures-clerk.house.gov.
- Outside spending. FEC independent expenditures for and against, shown only on the ledger. Dark-money donors that the law does not name will not be guessed.
What this set will not do
No letter grades. No 0–100 score. No DW-NOMINATE or other academic ideology index. No NRA, Planned Parenthood, Chamber, Heritage, AFL-CIO, or other interest-group scorecards — those are grades from a team. No OpenSecrets industry buckets on the card; that coding is journalism, not an FEC field. Contributor lists will not be sold or used to solicit donations (2 U.S.C. § 30111(a)(4)).
Reproduce a number
- Identity: chamber roster + Bioguide ID (the card’s T000250-style id).
- Votes: Senate — LIS XML. House — Clerk XML. Apply seated-date, contested, and caucus rules above.
- Laws: Congress.gov bills for that Bioguide ID with the member as sponsor and action type Became Law.
- Money: OpenFEC totals and Schedule A for the authorized chamber committee, cycle 2026, through the vintage date.
- Trades: Senate eFD or House Clerk periodic transaction reports.
Series One · 119th Congress · 2025–26. Vintage 1 September 2026. A skeptical reader should be able to rebuild any live stat from the linked record.