U.S. Congress voting records

Last week I received a call asking for the voting record for the recent nomination to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.  The patron wanted to know which Senate Democrats had voted against Mr. Debo Adegbile's nomination.

This vote was high profile enough that many newspapers such as The Washington Post answered her question, but I thought it best to go right to the source : U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 113^th Congress - 2^nd Session (2014).  Using the Senate's votes summary page allows you to easily search through recent roll call votes with detailed summaries.  After selecting the vote number (in this case, 0048) you can view the vote question and result, number required for majority, and the count.  The count may be sorted in various ways, I sorted by vote position which allowed me to see who in the "NAYs" were Democrats.

I used this government tool to supply the names, but the Post article also helped me explain the rationale for some of the voters. This gave the patron a better account so she could write to the dissenting voters.

If searching for results for a House vote, the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives also has a Roll Call votes page though I don't find their summaries to be as comprehensive or easy to sort through as the Senate version.