Terms of use

Plain Votes is run by Fusani Applications, LLC. To reach us, email hello@plainvotes.org, use our contact form, or reply to any email we’ve sent you.

The votes, bills and members on Plain Votes come from official and public sources: the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, the Library of Congress’s bill status files published by GovInfo, and the unitedstates/congress-legislators project. Our methodology lists each source, how often we update from it, and how every statistic is calculated.

We work to show this data accurately, but it’s provided as is. It can contain errors, either in the sources or in how we process them, and it can lag behind what’s happened in Congress, for example until a vote is published or our next update runs. Before relying on something for an important decision, check it against the official record. If you think something is wrong, please tell us using our contact form. If we find it’s wrong, we’ll correct it and note the correction on the methodology page.

Plain Votes is nonpartisan. Nothing on the site is an endorsement of, or opposition to, any candidate, party, bill or position, and we don’t tell you how to vote. Statistics such as how often members vote with their party describe the record. They aren’t ratings or judgments.

You’re welcome to use Plain Votes for any lawful purpose. When you do, please don’t:

• try to break into the site, get around its limits, or interfere with how it works, for example by probing for security holes or sending malicious data;
• send so many requests that the site slows down or stops for other people, whether by hand or with automated tools;
• use our forms to send spam, test stolen cards, or impersonate someone else;
• present our content in a way that suggests we endorse you, a candidate or a cause, or change it without saying you changed it.

Automated access, such as search engine crawlers and scripts that collect data, is fine if it’s reasonable: follow our robots.txt, identify your tool in its user agent, and keep to about one request a second. For bulk data, the original sources listed on our methodology page are often easier to work with. We may block or slow down any visitor or tool that puts too much load on the site.

The votes, bills and other records from Congress and the federal government are in the public domain, and you can use them however you like.

Our own content, such as the statistics we calculate, the text we write and the methodology, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You can copy, share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit Plain Votes, link to the page you used, and say if you changed anything.

The license doesn’t cover the site’s software, design or the Plain Votes name, which aren’t licensed for reuse. Crediting us is fine, but please don’t use the name in a way that suggests we’re affiliated with you or endorse you.

Contributions are voluntary. They don’t buy any goods, services or access, or any say over what we publish, and everything on the site is free whether or not you contribute. Plain Votes isn’t a registered charity, so contributions aren’t tax-deductible. Our contribution and refund policy covers refunds, mistaken charges and disputes.

Our privacy policy says what we collect when you use the site, and what we do with it.

We link to official sources and other sites so you can check our data and read more. We don’t control those sites and aren’t responsible for their content or how they handle your information.

The site and everything on it are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We don’t promise that the site will always be available or free of errors.

To the fullest extent the law allows, Fusani Applications, LLC and the people who work on Plain Votes aren’t liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits or opportunities, that come from your use of the site or your reliance on its content. Our total liability for any claim about the site is limited to the greater of the amount you contributed in the 12 months before the claim, or $50.

Some places don’t allow some of these limits, so they may not all apply to you.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, without regard to its conflict of law rules. Any dispute about them or the site will be decided in the state or federal courts located in North Carolina, and you agree to those courts’ jurisdiction.

If a court decides that any part of these terms can’t be enforced, that part will be limited or removed only as far as needed, and the rest of the terms stay in effect.

Some features we may add later, such as user accounts or paid features, may come with their own terms. We’ll show those terms before you sign up for the feature, and they’ll apply alongside these.

If we change these terms, we’ll post the new version here and update the date at the top. If you keep using the site after a change, you agree to the new terms. A change never affects a contribution made before it.

For a question about these terms, email hello@plainvotes.org, use our contact form, or reply to any email we’ve sent you.