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Methodology · alignment-v1.0.0

How we compare public voting records.

How Voter Choice compares the issues you choose with public roll-call records, including selection, limits, evidence, and corrections.

Issues and stances come from you

You describe the issues that matter to you and confirm the interpreted issue and direction before scoring. Voter Choice compares that stance with public voting records; it does not endorse, certify, rank, or recommend candidates.

Which votes count

We score all retained votes tagged to the matching issue within an inclusive rolling four-calendar-year window. An exact subissue is used when it has at least five scorable votes; otherwise the calculation falls back to the full parent-issue corpus.

Yea and nay votes can count with or against the stance. Present, absent, not-voting, unknown vote values, and tags without a valid direction are excluded from both numerator and denominator.

Scores, limited records, and evidence

The percentage is the votes aligned with the confirmed stance divided by all scorable selected votes, rounded to the nearest whole number. One to four votes still produce a score with a limited-data notice. With no scorable votes, the percentage is unavailable rather than zero.

The score uses the full selected corpus. We display no more than six evidence rows, ordered by tag confidence and then vote recency, so the visible examples may be fewer than the votes used in the calculation.

Candidate matching and limitations

Candidate matching is limited to the supplied jurisdiction and uses guarded name heuristics. An ambiguous or unmatched identity produces no result. Coverage depends on the records Voter Choice has retained and tagged; it is not complete for every office, jurisdiction, issue, or date.

Sources and AI-derived text

Federal roll calls and bill information come from Congress.gov; state legislative records may come from OpenStates and the applicable legislature. Evidence links identify the retained source used for the record; when an official authority link is available, we identify it separately from an aggregator. Some plain-language bill summaries are generated from public-domain CRS material and must be labeled as AI-generated; undecided external narratives are not published through the transparency contract.

Read the source catalog, freshness notes, attribution, and limitations.

Versioning and corrections

Methodology version alignment-v1.0.0 is effective 2026-08-31. Patch releases clarify or add optional metadata, minor releases add backward-compatible fields or sources, and major releases change scoring or status meanings. Results can still change as the rolling window and source data change.

To report a suspected error, email muxin.li.pro@gmail.com with the relevant source. We review the authoritative record and correct the responsible data or methodology layer.