Where the bills come from
Every bill on this site is pulled directly from Congress.gov's public API — the same official source journalists and congressional staff use. A small automated process checks once a day for newly summarized bills and adds them to the site, favoring ones with a plain-English summary already published (a bill nobody can read a description of isn't one people can meaningfully vote on) and filtering out purely ceremonial resolutions, like "National X Day" measures. The site keeps a rotating set of the most recently active bills from each chamber, so what you see today may look different in a few weeks as bills move through Congress or new ones come up.
Snapshot dates and "latest action" text shown on each bill reflect Congress.gov's records as of that day's sync, not necessarily this exact moment.
What voting here means (and doesn't)
Casting a Yea, Nay, or Present here adds one anonymous ballot to that bill's public tally on this site. That's it — it's a straw poll among Roll Call's visitors, not a legislative action, not a petition delivered anywhere, and not affiliated with the U.S. Congress, the Library of Congress, or Congress.gov in any way. The badge on each bill's shared card says "Public Opinion Poll" for exactly this reason: it's easy for "vote on a real bill" to sound official at a glance, and it isn't.
Voting is intentionally frictionless — no sign-up, no email. Your browser is given a random identifier the first time you vote, stored on your own device, which is what stops the same browser from voting twice on the same bill. It isn't tied to your name or identity, and nothing prevents someone from voting again from a different browser or device — this is a casual civic exercise, not a secure ballot, by design.
Contact your Senators
Every bill has a "Contact your Senators" panel: enter your ZIP code once, and the site shows your two Senators alongside an editable, pre-written message about that specific bill, plus a link to each Senator's official contact page. This only covers Senators, not your House Representative, because a ZIP code reliably maps to a state (which is all a Senator represents) but can't always be mapped to a single congressional district.
This is deliberately copy-and-paste rather than a one-click "send" button. Senate offices don't publish direct email addresses — each one uses its own web contact form, usually requiring your own name and address to submit — so there's no way for this site to actually deliver a message on your behalf. What it can do is hand you a finished, editable message and point you to exactly the right page to paste it into.
Sharing a specific bill
Every bill has its own link (look for "Share this bill" on the card), separate from the Roll Call homepage. Sharing that link on social media shows a preview card with that bill's own title and description, so the people you're sharing with land directly on the bill you meant, ready to vote and reach out to their own Senators — rather than the top of a long list they'd have to search through.
Who runs this
Roll Call is an independent project, not affiliated with the U.S. Congress, the Library of Congress, or Congress.gov. Bill text, status, and committee actions come from the official Congress.gov API and are shown as of each day's snapshot.