How ratings work
Readers rate the stories about members of Congress, and each member’s rating pools those votes. A story counts once, however many outlets carried it.
A story counts once
A story is one development in a member’s record: the articles that report it, including the same article republished by other outlets. However many outlets carry it, it counts once, and you have one vote on it: your latest, wherever you cast it.
How a story is rated
Until a story has 15 counted votes it shows its starting rating (how starting ratings are set), or a moderator’s if one reviewed it. From 15 votes readers decide: a good look or a bad look when one side leads by at least a fifth of the votes, otherwise mixed.
A vote counts once the account is a day old.
Informational stories
A story that reports what happened without casting the member in a good or bad light is informational: it is closed to voting and does not count toward the member’s rating. Any reader can ask a moderator to review that.
When most votes on an open story say it doesn’t affect the member, a moderator reviews it before anything changes; until then it counts as before.
A member’s rating
A member’s rating pools the good-look and bad-look votes on their open stories: (good − bad) ÷ (good + bad), from −100 to +100, shown once at least 15 such votes count.
On a story made only of opinion pieces (opinion, editorial, advocacy), reader votes count half until a news report joins it.
What changed on October 11, 2026
Until then every article counted on its own, so a story that many outlets carried counted many times, in ratings, lists and good/bad totals. Since then each story counts once. Most ratings moved by less than 2 points; some moved by 10 or more. Totals of good-look and bad-look stories fell where one story had been counted once per outlet.