# Outland News — Congressional Accountability Project
## Methodology Document
### Generated 2026-06-02

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## 1. Purpose

This project documents three overlapping accountability signals for all 536 current members of the U.S. Congress:

1. **Attendance** — Did the member vote?
2. **Conflicts of interest** — Did the member trade stocks in sectors their committees regulate?
3. **Campaign finance** — Did the member receive PAC funding from companies they regulate?

All data derives exclusively from mandatory federal public disclosures. No inference, allegation, or claim of wrongdoing is made. The STOCK Act requires disclosure precisely because conflicts are predictable; this project makes them visible.

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## 2. Data Sources

### 2.1 Roll-Call Votes
- **Source:** voteview.com (Lewis et al., Voteview: Congressional Roll-Call Votes Database)
- **Coverage:** 115th–119th Congress
- **Field used:** `cast_code` — 1 (Yea), 6 (Nay), 7 (Present), 9 (Not Voting/Absent)
- **Attendance formula:** `votes_cast / (votes_cast + votes_absent)`, where cast = codes 1, 6, 7

### 2.2 Periodic Transaction Reports (Stock Trades)
- **Source:** efdsearch.senate.gov (Senate), efts.house.gov (House)
- **Coverage:** Senate 2012–2026 (targeted); House 2015–2025
- **Deduplication:** INSERT OR IGNORE on source URL primary key

### 2.3 Campaign Finance (FEC)
- **Source:** OpenFEC Schedule A receipts API
- **Coverage:** Cycles 2022, 2024, 2026
- **Scope:** Top 100 PAC contributors (≥$1,000) + top 100 individual donors (≥$1,000) per member per cycle

### 2.4 Committee Assignments
- **Source:** unitedstates/congress-legislators GitHub repository
- **Coverage:** 119th Congress

### 2.5 Member Roster
- **Source:** Congress.gov API /v3/member + unitedstates/congress-legislators YAML
- **Coverage:** 118th–119th Congress, 536 current members

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## 3. Tier Definitions

| Tier | Criteria |
|---|---|
| **Oath Breaker** | Any member with at least one documented trade in a sector their committee directly regulates, regardless of attendance |
| **Exemplar** | Top 20% attendance among non-Oath-Breaker members with voting records |
| **Average** | All other members (non-Oath-Breaker, not top 20% attendance) |

**BLS Baseline:** The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that full-time workers attended work 96.8% of scheduled days (2024 Employer Absences data). This benchmark appears on every scorecard for context.

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## 4. Conflict Score

The conflict score is a composite index combining:
- Volume: number of trades in committee-regulated sectors
- Value: estimated dollar value (using range midpoints)
- Recency: 1.5× weight multiplier for trades in the prior 730 days
- Leadership: additional weight for committee chairs/ranking members

Formula (approximate):
```
score = count(overlap_trades) × log(1 + estimated_value_USD / 1,000,000) × recency_factor
```

Score is a relative ordering tool, not an absolute measure of wrongdoing.

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## 5. Amount Midpoints

PTR filings disclose value ranges (e.g., "$1,001–$15,000"). Midpoints used:

| Range | Midpoint |
|---|---|
| $1,001–$15,000 | $8,000 |
| $15,001–$50,000 | $32,500 |
| $50,001–$100,000 | $75,000 |
| $100,001–$250,000 | $175,000 |
| $250,001–$500,000 | $375,000 |
| $500,001–$1,000,000 | $750,000 |
| $1,000,001–$5,000,000 | $3,000,000 |
| $5,000,001–$25,000,000 | $15,000,000 |

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## 6. Sector Mapping

Committee sectors are inferred from committee names. PTR asset types are mapped to the same sector taxonomy via keyword matching. Overlap is determined when the PTR asset sector matches any sector associated with the member's committee assignments.

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## 7. Known Limitations

- Senate PTR data for some members is sparse (paper-only filings are not machine-readable)
- Ruben Gallego (AZ-Senate) has 2 paper PTR filings only — no electronic records available
- Thom Tillis (NC-Senate) PTR coverage 2019–2022 is partial
- The STOCK Act does not prohibit trading; it requires disclosure. This project documents disclosed activity only
- Conflict score does not distinguish between trades made before and after committee assignment
- FEC individual donors are capped at 100 per member per cycle; very large fundraisers may be undercounted on the individual side

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## 8. Legal Disclaimer

Nothing in this project constitutes a legal finding, allegation of wrongdoing, or claim of STOCK Act violation. All documented patterns derive from mandatory federal disclosures. The appropriate question for journalism and voters is whether members who trade in sectors they regulate, while receiving funding from those sectors, should do so — not whether they have broken any law.

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*Outland News — Congressional Accountability Project*
*outlandnews.net*
*Generated 2026-06-02*