About VoteBrief

Spot a mistake, have a question, or want VoteBrief to cover your city? Email us at [email protected] — we read every message.

When we list how each person voted, we check it against the city's official minutes first. Records we haven't verified yet are clearly marked as awaiting the official minutes — don't quote those; check the official minutes. We never guess at names or votes. If the record doesn't say, we don't print it.

Transcripts are produced by computer from the city's public recordings and published word-for-word as spoken. Mistakes happen — if you spot one, we'll fix it openly, with a note saying what changed.

Coverage right now: San José City Council (324 meetings, June 18, 2019–November 5, 2026); Oakland City Council (269 meetings, January 16, 2018–October 20, 2026); Seattle City Council (357 meetings, June 12, 2018–October 26, 2026); Denver City Council (380 meetings, January 2, 2018–November 9, 2026); Boston City Council (255 meetings, January 1, 2018–October 7, 2026); Phoenix City Council (186 meetings, January 10, 2018–October 7, 2026). Coverage grows as meetings are transcribed.

What the badges mean

Verified · official minutes — the vote was checked against the city's adopted minutes and they agree. Verified · draft minutes — checked against minutes that aren't final yet. Verified · hand-checked — a person compared the transcript against the official record vote by vote. Awaiting official minutes — from the transcript only; the outcome may be shown, but the member-by-member record is published only after the minutes check, so don't quote it yet. Records conflict — see note — the transcript and the minutes disagree, and the note says how. The minutes win.

Every meeting starts as the city's own public recording. We download it and transcribe it on our own computer with open-source speech recognition. The audio never goes to a third-party service.

Then we check our work. We compared our transcripts against the city's official minutes for three full meetings, vote by vote: we caught all 20 votes, and every result we reported matched the official record. Where the audio never announced a result, we said so instead of guessing.

The honest limits: computer transcription mishears names sometimes, and council votes are usually announced as "passes unanimously" with no roll call read aloud — so exact tallies and who voted which way come from the official minutes, not from us. Anything we haven't verified is marked clearly, and you can always jump from any vote straight to the moment in the recording to hear it yourself.

Voted with the majority (member pages) is the share of a member's Yes/No votes where their vote matched the side with more votes on that item. Abstentions and absences are not counted in the percentage, and the count behind it is always shown. Unanimous votes do count — everyone voting Yes on a unanimous item is with the majority — so read the percentage together with the member's No votes and attendance.

How often members vote together (council pages) is the share of minutes-checked votes where two members both voted Yes or No and voted the same way. It is a record of co-voting, published without labels or rankings.

Participation (Congress) is the share of a member's recorded roll calls where they cast a vote; the rest are marked “did not vote.” Present means the member was there but did not vote yes or no.

Motion — a proposal put to a vote. Most decisions start as one. Second — another member's agreement that the motion should be considered.

Consent agenda — routine items grouped and approved in a single vote, unless a member pulls one for separate discussion.

Ordinance — a local law; usually needs two readings on different days. Resolution — a formal statement of the body's position or a one-time action, simpler than an ordinance.

Continued — postponed to a later meeting. Abstain — present, but voting neither yes nor no. Quorum — the minimum number of members who must be present for votes to count.

Cloture (U.S. Senate) — a vote to end debate; it is not a vote on the measure itself. Motion to table — a vote to set a measure aside, usually ending it without a direct vote on it. Roll call — a vote recorded member by member.

Minutes — the official written record of a meeting, adopted by the body. For city councils, the minutes are the legal record of every vote.