Do Your Reps Represent You?

How to know what your representatives are doing, with govtrack.us

Want to hold your representatives accountable, but not sure how to keep up with all of their actions?

Follow these instructions to use the open source website govtrack.us to get email alerts (in the moment or weekly digest) on everything your representatives do.

Find your representatives

Go to govtrack.us and type in your address.

The website will pop up your senators and representative.

Follow your representatives

For each representative, click on the “More info >>” link to open their detailed page.

Sign up for email alerts with the “Get alerts” button:

You will need to make an account with govtrack.us so that you can manage your subscription. Don’t worry, they won’t email you asking you to sign petitions. It’s an informational site, not a political action group.

Once you’re signed in, you can get back to following your rep.

You get a few options for the level of detail and frequency of communication you want. I recommend Weekly Updates so you don’t get overwhelmed:

Repeat for each representative.

Stay informed

This is what a tracking email looks like:

Truncated; this Feb. 5 email goes on to list 45 separate items where the three reps I’m following were involved. Most are just the title of the item and a list of how my reps voted.

If you want to know more about what your representatives are voting on, you can click through to learn more and see how others voted:

You can even click through from there (the H.J.Res.41 link) to see the status of the bill and read its full text.

This should give you all the information you need to know whether your representatives represent your own values. What you do with that information is up to you– voting, phone calls, emails, rallies, or nothing at all.

Govtrack is an open source website. I don’t work on it, but I think it is an excellent tool. Here is the project’s Github repo and its Patreon account in case you want to support it with time or money.

Looking to do your part? One way to get involved is to read the Indivisible Guide, which is written by former congressional staffers and is loaded with best practices for making Congress listen. Or follow this publication, connect with us on Twitter, and join us on Facebook.