Transparency

Last Updated: October 5, 2026

Representative government depends on trust.

Trust depends on being able to see how things work. This page explains who operates AmericanVoters, how it's funded, how we produce the legislative briefings you see on the platform, where we use AI, and how we handle your information.

Who Operates AmericanVoters

AmericanVoters is built and operated by SeniorsUnited, Inc., a nonprofit civic organization focused on strengthening democratic accountability and helping constituents engage with the legislation that affects them.

SeniorsUnited supports a range of civic concerns and policy areas. For SeniorsUnited's full mission and history, including the organization's origin story, see seniorsunited.com.

Our Mission

The mission of AmericanVoters is to strengthen representative democracy by helping people:

• understand what Congress is considering
• follow legislation connected to their concerns
• communicate with their representatives through official channels

The platform is designed to support informed participation between elections.

Funding & Independence

AmericanVoters is supported primarily by individual contributions from people who believe in strengthening civic participation. Payments are processed by Stripe; we do not store your payment information.

SeniorsUnited, Inc. is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. Contributions are not tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes.

The platform is not funded by corporations or lobbying organizations.

Contributions help support:

• platform development and maintenance
• bill briefings and legislative analysis
• civic engagement tools for constituents

AmericanVoters does not accept funding that would influence how legislation is explained or evaluated.

Editorial Independence

AmericanVoters publishes legislative briefings to help people understand what Congress is considering.

These briefings are developed independently and guided by the civic principles outlined in our Values & Principles page. They are not written or influenced by political parties, campaigns, corporations, or lobbying organizations.

Our goal is to make legislative activity clearer so people can decide for themselves how they wish to engage.

How Bill Briefings Are Produced

Every bill we track gets an AmericanVoters Legislative Briefing — a structured, source-grounded document that explains the bill in plain English.

Source-First Approach

Every briefing is built from four official, nonpartisan sources: Congress.gov and Govinfo.gov — the government's own portals for U.S. legislative activity and official publications — together with the two nonpartisan agencies that work for Congress: the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). From these, we draw on:

• Bill Text — the actual legal language that defines what would change
• CRS Summaries — nonpartisan analysis from the Congressional Research Service
• CBO Cost Estimates — the Congressional Budget Office's nonpartisan projections of a bill's budgetary impact, which ground a briefing's fiscal considerations
• Congressional Record — statements and debate from members of Congress
• Related Bills — alternative approaches to the same issue

If something isn't supported by these sources, we don't include it. No source, no statement.

When the official record is thin or missing — for example, a newly introduced bill with no CRS summary or CBO estimate yet — briefings say so directly rather than filling gaps with assumptions.

Two Versions

Each bill has two versions of its briefing. Both are written by AI from the sources above (see How We Use AI, below).

• A short version — written automatically when we ingest a new bill from Congress.gov. It's what you see in browse views and bill cards. Fact-focused; no perspective sections.
• A full version — generated when you follow a bill on AmericanVoters. A structured deep brief with sections for facts, fiscal considerations, supporters' arguments, critics' arguments, context, and a clearly-labeled perspective section called "Our Take." This is what you see on Bills We're Following.

Facts and Perspective

Factual sections — including what the bill does, key provisions, supporters' arguments, critics' arguments, fiscal considerations, and context — are strictly source-grounded. Every claim must be traceable to material from Congress.gov, Govinfo.gov, CRS, or CBO. When the record is limited, the briefing says so explicitly rather than inferring.

Perspective appears only in clearly labeled sections. See Our Take, below.

Multi-Pass Generation

Full briefings go through a multi-pass process:

• Extraction — source materials are parsed into structured claims and attributions
• Generation — a new briefing draft is composed using the extraction
• Quality Check — an automated check of the draft against our standards (source-grounding, neutral language, source attribution)
• Revision — final adjustments based on the quality check

Our Take: Where Perspective Comes In

Factual sections tell you what a bill does. Perspective lives in two clearly labeled sections of a full briefing: "Our Take" (primary) and "Why This Bill Matters" (light touch). They explore the civic questions a bill raises, drawing on a set of questions we call the Civic Evaluation Framework:

• Constitutional Alignment — How does this proposal affect constitutional rights, responsibilities, or the balance of power?
• Representative Accountability — Does it strengthen or weaken transparency, oversight, accountability, or the connection between people and representative government?
• National Commitments — Does it affect established public commitments such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, veterans' benefits, or other long-standing obligations?
• Fiscal Responsibility — What long-term fiscal implications, sustainability questions, or tradeoffs does the bill raise?
• Real-World Policy Outcomes — Based on the design of the policy, what practical outcomes, implementation challenges, or public effects may follow?
• Public Safety and Security — Does the bill affect public safety, domestic stability, national defense, or the government's responsibility to provide for the common defense?
• Intergenerational Responsibility — How might the proposal affect future generations in terms of stability, opportunity, obligations, or inherited risk?
• Shared Sacrifice / Shared Prosperity — Does the bill shift burdens or benefits in ways that raise questions about mutual responsibility, fairness of contribution, or broad public benefit?

These questions guide interpretation, not conclusions. They aren't applied to every bill — only the ones where they're genuinely relevant. The goal isn't to push you toward a position. It's to surface the civic questions a thoughtful reader might want to consider.

Perspective sections never claim that AmericanVoters or SeniorsUnited supports or opposes a bill, and never tell you what to think. They close with neutral framing — for example, "Americans may view these tradeoffs differently" — to preserve room for reasonable disagreement.

How We Use AI

We use AI as a tool, and we want you to know exactly where.

• Reading and translating bills. AI writes the plain-English summary of each bill and, when a member follows a bill, the full briefing. It works only from the official sources listed above, and each briefing lists what it used. Our quality checks are automated; no person reviews each briefing before it's published, so mistakes are possible. The official bill text is always one click away.
• Perspective. The two clearly labeled perspective sections, "Our Take" and "Why This Bill Matters," apply our published Civic Evaluation Framework (see above). They're the only places AI offers a perspective, and they follow the rules below.
• Matching concerns to bills. When you describe a concern, AI suggests bills that relate to it. You decide which to follow.
• Subject lines. When you write about a concern rather than a bill, AI summarizes your text into a subject line, which you see before sending.
• Screening. Like most sites, we use AI to check messages, comments, concerns, and profile photos against our community rules, and to check that a message about a bill is still about that bill. If something is declined, it isn't sent. We never change your words.

What AI never does: it never writes your message to Congress, and it never decides your position on anything.

Rules the AI Must Follow

Briefings are written by AI services from OpenAI under a strict, structured prompt — the detailed set of instructions we give the AI for how to produce a briefing. The prompt includes explicit rules that apply to every briefing:

• No organizational voice. Phrases like "our values," "our mission," "we believe," "SeniorsUnited supports" are banned from every section.
• No advocacy or calls to action.
• No partisan or emotional language.
• No predictions of political outcomes.
• No unsupported claims. No source, no statement.
• No claim that AmericanVoters or SeniorsUnited supports or opposes a bill.
• A required neutral closing that preserves room for reasonable disagreement.

These rules exist because the goal of a briefing is to help you think — not to tell you what to think.

For details about which AI services we use and how they handle your information, see our Privacy Policy.

When You Message Congress

The rules above govern what we publish. This section covers what we send on your behalf — because a message to a congressional office carries our name alongside your words, and you should know exactly what it says.

Your message reaches your representatives through the official systems Congress operates for constituent mail. What we hand to those systems is:

• Your message. If you're writing about a concern, it starts as the text you typed. If you're writing about a bill, we start you with a draft built from your answers: one sentence stating the choice you made on the bill, your comment in your own words, and a closing thank-you. Either way, the whole message is in front of you before you send it, and you can change any part of it. We do screen messages against our community rules before sending, and we will decline to deliver one that breaks them — but we will never alter one and send it anyway.
• Your name, address, and email, plus your phone number if your profile has one. Your address is how your message is routed to the office that actually represents you — that's why we ask you to confirm it before you can send — and the office can use your email or phone to reply to you.
• A statement identifying us as the organization that delivered it. It is identical on every message we send, regardless of the bill or the topic.
• A subject line. We compose it — drawn from the bill you selected, or summarized from your own text when you write about a concern — and it is the one part you can't change. We show it to you before you send.
• Routing details the systems require — the bill or topic your message concerns, a link to americanvoters.us, and our contact information as the delivery agent.

The statement identifying us reads, in full:

"SeniorsUnited, Inc., a 501(c)(4) nonpartisan civic advocacy nonprofit, owns and operates the AmericanVoters.US platform. This message comes from a verified constituent whose identity and congressional district we confirmed before delivery. SeniorsUnited takes no editorial position on the topic of this message."

Congress's messaging systems provide a field for a sending organization to mark a message as supporting or opposing the bill it concerns. We leave that field empty on every message. No message we deliver tells a congressional office that AmericanVoters or SeniorsUnited is for or against anything.

We are the envelope, not the letter. The position that reaches your representative is yours.

There is a second field we decline. Congress's systems let a sending organization ask that you be added to your representative's mailing list. We always answer no. Sending a message through AmericanVoters never puts you on a list — if you want your representative's newsletter, that should be your choice to make with their office, not a box we tick on your behalf.

Looking ahead: as participation grows, we intend to publish what our members collectively said about a bill — The Voice of AmericanVoters — and to share it with Congress. How that work will be built is still being designed, and we would rather say so than describe it as settled. What we can say now is how we would present it: as a report of what our members said, published alongside enough about how it was produced — which bill, the briefing those members read, and how many people it reflects — that you can weigh it yourself rather than take our word for it.

Data & Privacy

AmericanVoters collects only the information necessary to operate the platform and provide civic engagement tools.

Your information is used to:

• help match legislation to your concerns
• deliver messages through official congressional channels
• improve the platform's functionality

If you choose to follow and vote only, we keep your state and district, not your address. We use your address once to find your district, then delete it. We keep your address only if you choose to message Congress, because Congress requires it on every message.

AmericanVoters does not sell or trade user data.

For full details — including which service providers we work with, how AI processes content you submit, and what state privacy rights you have — please see our Privacy Policy.