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How BallotView Works

BallotView helps voters understand who represents them and how they vote.

BallotView is a federal voter guide built to make congressional data easier to use. Instead of starting with complex legislative records, the app turns public data into clear representative profiles, issue summaries, and election context.

What voters can do
  • Look up senators and House representatives by ZIP code
  • Search for a specific representative by name
  • Review issue profiles across topics like housing, trade, gun policy, and climate
  • Compare two representatives side by side
  • See who is running in the 2026 midterm elections
Where the data comes from
  • Congress.gov for legislative activity and bill context
  • Official Senate roll call data for Senate votes
  • Official House and Senate websites for stated positions
  • FEC candidate data for federal election-season candidate listings
  • Public legislator datasets for current member information

Why the product is structured this way

Find your federal delegation

Enter a ZIP code to see your U.S. senators and House representative. BallotView resolves your result locally from prebuilt district and state lookup data so the experience stays fast.

See what current officeholders have actually done

Each representative profile shows recent votes, issue profiles, and party alignment. The goal is to help voters understand congressional behavior in plain language rather than forcing them to read raw roll calls.

Handle incomplete public data honestly

When BallotView does not have enough tracked votes to score an issue confidently, it shows that clearly. In many of those cases, the app adds an official-position summary sourced from the member's Senate or House website so voters still get useful context.

Compare representatives side by side

BallotView can compare two officeholders across issue areas and generate a structured comparison summary based on the evidence already in the data model.

Separate current officeholders from election candidates

The 2026 Midterm Candidate Section is intentionally separate from current representatives. That keeps voting records, official positions, and election-season candidate filings from getting blended together in confusing ways.

What BallotView is optimizing for

The app is designed around trust and clarity. That means BallotView separates current officeholder records from campaign-season candidates, labels low-confidence issue areas honestly, and avoids hiding uncertainty behind overly confident summaries.