Senate Grader
How is your Senator actually doing? Senate Grader grades all 100 U.S. Senators on a transparent, non-partisan 100-point rubric — turning complex political records into a single, honest letter grade.
Most Americans can't evaluate their Senator's performance objectively. Political records are buried across dozens of databases, media coverage is partisan, and no single tool exists that answers the simple question honestly: is my Senator doing their job? Senate Grader was built to answer that — without taking sides.
A civic accountability app grading all 100 U.S. Senators across four equally-weighted categories: Campaign Promises Kept, Voting Attendance, Votes Match Stated Positions, and People's Priorities. Each senator receives a score out of 100, a letter grade A–F, a promise tracker with individual promise quotes and Kept/Broken/In Progress status, a People's Priorities breakdown across cross-party issues, and a Wealth While in Office financial disclosure section. All scoring criteria cite their primary data source.
The Grade Is the Design.
Before writing a single prompt, the real design challenge had to be solved: what makes a Senator good at their job — and how do you measure it without injecting partisan bias? The answer came from researching what Americans broadly agree on regardless of party affiliation. Four categories emerged: whether senators show up to vote, whether they vote consistently with their stated positions, whether they keep their campaign promises, and whether they act on the issues most Americans care about independent of party lines. Each category carries 25 points. Each data point within a category carries 5 points. The methodology is fully transparent and shown on every senator profile.
Four Questions. One Grade.
Campaign Promises Kept
Specific promises made during campaign or while seeking re-election — each tracked with the original quote, a Kept/Broken/In Progress status, and supporting evidence.
Source · Ballotpedia + OpenSecrets.org
Voting Attendance
Did the senator show up to vote? The most basic measure of whether an elected official is doing the job they were elected to do.
Source · GovTrack.us attendance data
Votes Match Stated Positions
Does the senator vote the way they say they will? Compares public statements and stated policy positions against actual voting record.
Source · Congress.gov voting record
People's Priorities
Cross-party issues most Americans support regardless of political affiliation — including government transparency, term limits, financial accountability, and election integrity. Each issue scored with a Support/Oppose/No Clear Position status.
Source · Cross-party public opinion research
Issues Americans Agree On — Regardless of Party.
The People's Priorities category was the most carefully designed section of the rubric. Rather than using hot-button partisan issues, the criteria were selected based on what research shows Americans broadly support across party lines: government transparency, term limits, financial accountability in office, and similar cross-cutting concerns. A senator is not graded on their policy positions — they are graded on whether their actions align with issues their own constituents consistently support, independent of party affiliation.
Version 1 Is Live. Here's What's Next.
Real Data Pipeline
Current data is research-validated mock data structured to match how live data will eventually flow. The next phase connects to GovTrack, Congress.gov, Ballotpedia, and OpenSecrets APIs to populate all 100 senators with verified, live data.
Financial Disclosure Data
The Wealth While in Office section — tracking net worth before and during time in office — requires per-senator research from financial disclosure filings. This section is built and ready; the data population is the remaining work.
Search, Filter & Compare
Filtering by state, party, or grade range — and side-by-side senator comparison — are the next UX features. The grading infrastructure is already built; these are interface additions on top of a working system.
Civic Tool Shipped
All 100 Senators graded.
A fully working accountability app grading all 100 U.S. Senators on a transparent, non-partisan 100-point rubric — self-initiated, fully deployed, and built without a brief, a dataset, or an assigned problem.
Non-Partisan Rubric Designed
Cross-party by design.
Defining four grading categories that measure performance without partisan bias required genuine research into cross-party public opinion. The rubric design process was as rigorous as any enterprise UX framework.
Promise Tracking at Scale
Every promise, cited.
Each senator's profile includes a Promise Tracker with individual campaign quotes, Kept/Broken/In Progress status, and cited evidence — a transparent accountability record that goes far beyond a simple score.
- The rubric is the product.
Grading senators sounds like a data problem. It's actually a design problem. Every category, every data point, every source citation required a defensible design decision — and getting it wrong would undermine the entire tool's credibility.
- Non-partisan design requires active effort, not just good intentions.
It's easy to say a tool is non-partisan. It's much harder to build a scoring system that holds up to scrutiny from both sides. The People's Priorities category in particular required research into what Americans agree on — not what divides them.
- Self-initiated projects reveal what you actually care about.
Every decision on a class project is made within someone else's constraints. On this one, every decision was mine. That accountability produces different, better work — and a portfolio piece that's genuinely hard to fake.
- Civic tech is underserved by designers.
Most civic and government tools are genuinely difficult to use. There is enormous opportunity for designers willing to engage with complex, politically sensitive subject matter and make it clear, honest, and usable for regular people.