Government Voting Records

November 14, 2009 12:03 PM

Is there a simple way, on the Web, to research how each member in both the House of Representatives and Senate voted on a bill? Specifically, I am looking for how Nancy Bean (Illinois) voted on the recent Health Care Bill. Thanks in advance.
posted by Mckoan1 to Law & Government (5 answers total)

Open Congress should give you this exact info. You can also set up an RSS feed that alerts you how a representative or senator votes each time they do so.
posted by reenum at 12:06 PM on November 14, 2009

Do you mean Melissa Bean? Here are her recent votes on Govtrack.us, which has similar functionality to Open Congress.
posted by enn at 12:11 PM on November 14, 2009

OpenCongress is possibly the most well known and useful, but there are dozens of alternatives, ranging from THOMAS itself to the Washington Post [Bean], Congress.org, the venerable VoteSmart [Bean], and narrower interest groups such as Public Citizen track issues in their focus space as well.
posted by dhartung at 1:15 PM on November 14, 2009

Huh--looks like the Clerk of the House site, the official source for such information, is down at the moment. Once it comes back up, you should be able to see the full roll-call vote on the bill.

Typically, you can start at THOMAS, run a search for the bill, then navigate to its Bill Summary & Status page. On that page, there will be a link to All Congressional Actions. That page will have links to any roll-call votes. Note that not all Congressional votes are by roll call, so it's not always possible to know how a particular member voted.

The fine folks at THOMAS are a handsome, smart, and skillful bunch, some of whom have very low Metafilter user numbers.
posted by MrMoonPie at 1:48 PM on November 14, 2009

You could also just call her DC office- the number is 202-225-3711 or her website has been updated with the information.
posted by timpanogos at 10:08 PM on November 14, 2009