Civic Transparency Platform
City Council Votes, Finally Transparent
See exactly how your city council votes — every member, every meeting, every decision. Searchable, transparent, and built on official public records.
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Dashboard Overview
Public records that aren't really public
City council voting data is technically available to anyone. In practice, it's buried in PDFs, scattered across Legistar portals, and locked inside meeting minutes that take hours to parse.
This gap between “public” and “accessible” has real consequences. When residents can't see how their representatives vote, accountability disappears. Journalists can't track patterns. Advocates can't build evidence-based cases.
VoteWatching closes that gap. We take the records your city already produces and make them genuinely usable.
How it works
From raw public records to a transparency dashboard in three steps.
We collect your city's data
We pull from official council minutes, agendas, and legislative management systems like Legistar, PrimeGov, and CivicClerk.
We build your dashboard
A clean, branded, searchable interface customized for your city's council structure and history.
Your community uses it
Residents, journalists, advocates, and officials can search votes, track members, and explore alignment — instantly.
What's included
Everything you need to understand how your city council votes.
Council member profiles
Aye rate, participation percentage, and dissent rate for every council member.
Searchable vote database
Find any vote by topic, year, outcome, or council member. Filter and export results.
Voting alignment analysis
Which members vote together. Which disagree. See the coalitions shaping decisions.
Meeting archive
Complete meeting history with links to official agendas, minutes, and source documents.
Topic-based filtering
Filter votes by policy area — housing, policing, zoning, transit, and more.
Educational glossary
Plain-language explanations of voting terms, procedures, and council processes.
Who it's for
Built for anyone who needs to understand how their city council votes.
Advocacy Organizations
Track how council members vote on the issues your members care about. Share searchable voting records to support your campaigns.
Local Journalists
Search years of voting data in seconds instead of digging through PDFs and meeting minutes. Spot patterns and verify claims quickly.
Government Affairs Teams
Monitor council voting trends and member positions across multiple policy areas. Research voting history before meetings.
City Governments
Make your existing public records more accessible to residents. Provide a transparency tool without building one from scratch.
Researchers & Academics
Access structured, searchable voting data for political science research, policy analysis, and civic engagement studies.
Engaged Residents
See exactly how your council member votes — not just what they say. Look up any vote, any meeting, any member.
Built on official records
Every data point comes directly from official city council records — agendas, minutes, and legislative management systems. We link to source documents so you can always verify.
Columbus, OH prototype live now at city-votes-columbus-oh.vercel.app
Ready to bring VoteWatching to your city?
Tell us about your city and we'll show you what's possible.
Or see the live Columbus demo first.