How stances are determined

Each person gets two placements on every issue, one from what they say and one from what they do. Both come only from their own words and their official record, and every item links back to its source.

Five steps

Collect. Statements and actions from the last 6 years are gathered from the approved sources listed below, and nowhere else.
Check. A script goes back to each source and confirms the quote, vote or bill is really there. Anything that fails is held back.
Score blind. Each statement is matched to a written position on the issue's scale, with the name, party, state and office removed. Each bill is scored once, and every vote on it takes that score.
Combine. Item scores become one Says placement and one Does placement per issue. A Does placement needs at least 2 actions, and below that the issue reads "Not enough on record".
Compare. The issue is marked in red only when Says and Does sit 2 or more points apart, on opposite sides of center, with at least 2 items behind each.

The issues and their ends

Each issue runs between two named policy directions, with 5 written positions on each side. The middle is where the two parties have agreed in law. Each party's mainstream sits around 3 on its side, so the far ends are positions few elected officials hold.

Which end counts as left and which as right follows where the two parties stand in the 2020s, and that changes. Trade is the clearest case. In the 1990s most Democrats and organized labor opposed free-trade deals such as NAFTA while most Republicans backed them. Today more tariffs sits on the right because that is where the Republican Party now is.

Issue	One end	Other end	Map axis

What counts as evidence

	Sets the placement	Supporting
Says	Their own issue page, policy plan or platform, the latest in the window	Speeches, press releases, remarks, debate answers
Does	Bills they sponsored or cosponsored, final passage votes, bills signed or vetoed, executive orders	Amendment votes

On every bill in the data, each person's recorded yes or no on final passage counts, read straight from the roll call, so a vote against a bill weighs the same as a vote for it. When the person explained a vote on an official site, that explanation is shown as context and never changes the score. Procedural votes never count. The window is the last 6 years, or the last 6 years in office for someone who has left, and evidence is capped at 7 items per person and issue.

Approved sources

Evidence comes only from the sites below, and the build refuses any item that links elsewhere. News articles, opinion pieces, interest-group ratings, Wikipedia and personal social media are never used.

Source	Used for	Items	Verified

How sources are checked

Evidence was gathered with help from an AI model, so nothing it found is taken on trust. A quote must appear word for word on a dated copy of its page in the Internet Archive. A House vote must match the House clerk's roll call, and a Senate vote must match Voteview's copy of the Senate roll call. A sponsorship, signing or veto must appear on the official bill record. Anything that fails stays off the site until a person checks it. Anything not yet matched, or whose page would not load, is shown marked "source not yet confirmed".

How scoring works

Each statement is shown to the scorer with the name, party, state, office and any named colleague removed, then matched to the nearest written position. This build used , , and the median of the runs is the item's score.

Bills are scored once, the same way, on what a yes vote supports. A yes vote, a sponsorship or a signing takes the bill's score, and a no vote or a veto takes its mirror. Two people who cast the same vote get the same score, whoever they are. Must-pass bills such as the yearly defense bill sit near the center unless they change the level the issue asks about.

What someone says comes from their latest issue page when there is one, and otherwise from a weighted median of their speeches, newer ones counting more. What someone does is the weighted median of their bills, votes and orders.

The page never shows a number. A placement reads Center, Leans, the end's name, or Strongly, and the one-line summaries were written by the same blind run. When a summary uses one side's own word for a policy, the word sits in quote marks.

Order and portraits

Lists start with the people readers look up most on Wikipedia over the last three full months. That order reflects curiosity, never a position. The People page can also sort by name.

Portraits are official government portraits, all public domain, cropped to the same face size and given the same light contrast adjustment, so no one is framed closer or looks harsher than another.

Checks still to come

The source check runs on every build. The full method sets more checks: 3 runs agree within 1 point on 90% of items, showing the name moves scores by under 0.5 points, each party's leaders land on their own platform's side, and a person spot-checks 30 items. The site is in beta until it passes them.

Corrections

Report a wrong quote, a wrong placement or a broken link to osilen93@gmail.com.