Published-method preview

How topics and featured records are selected

The tool indexes official recorded House and Senate roll calls. It does not score, endorse, assign ideology, or tell visitors what to think.

Evidence rule

A vote receives a topic only when an approved evidence term appears in its official title, question, or summary. Bill numbers, sponsors, parties, outside commentary, and assumed policy effects are not enough. Unsupported records stay explicitly unmapped.

What “attention” means

Attention means visible legislative activity in the stored official roll-call record: supported recorded actions, distinct measures, and recency. It does not mean public popularity, polling, importance, urgency, or who is right.

Balanced-exposure rule

Left-interest and right-interest navigation collections use the same slot count, confidence threshold, and deterministic activity formula. These are reader-interest collections, not labels applied to representatives or votes. Cross-cutting and governance collections use the same cap and formula.

Recorded-vote context

Procedural actions, nominations, amendments, and final-passage votes are labeled separately when the official record supports the distinction. A position on one action must not be described as a position on every issue related to a measure.

This page describes the method actually in use. It does not claim political neutrality.