Project Vote Smart provides easy access to Congressional and State voting records and maintains a collection of key votes grouped by issue. Key votes typically include the initial passage of legislation and final conference report votes versions (the compromised versions of bills passed in separate House and Senate version). PVS uses a criteria to select key votes:

Descriptions of the votes are written by PVS staff and based on information included in the Congressional Record and or State House and Senate Journals, with additional background information from newspapers, magazines, etc. PVS provides summaries for each selected key vote. The summary does not necessarily reflect the final version of the bill.

Key votes selected by PVS staff go through an approval process before web site posting, with political scientists and journalists of opposing viewpoints reviewing both the selection and the content. This is to ensure clarity, relevance, nonpartisanship and accuracy. After the approval process is completed, the votes are ready to go into the database and subsequently on-line.