As far as we’re aware at the Center for Legislative Archives, there is not a single, compiled list of all the unanimous votes cast by either the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House of Representatives.

However, there are several ways to find information on recorded votes online.

Congress.gov, the official website for U.S. federal legislative information, has links to roll call votes from the 101st Congress (1989) to today. Congress.gov also offers a resource guide on recorded votes.

If you’re looking for video, C-SPAN has made it easy to find votes by Congress.

There are also several resources available to locate voting records pre-1989. The first is GovTrack, which pulls data from a variety of published sources and has a section of their website dedicated to voting records. Another resource is Congressional Quarterly, a print publication likely available through a local library.

And there is always the Congressional Record -- the official record of debate and proceedings on the floor of the House and the Senate. The Congressional Record is published each day Congress is in session. The Congressional Record is freely available online through GovInfo. To find voting information, we recommend starting with the Index published at the end of each session. The predecessor publications to the Congressional Record are also available online through A Century of Lawmaking.

For more information on the congressional voting process, Parliamentarian’s of the House and Senate have written guides on the legislative process for each chamber -- see How Our Laws Are Made and Enactment of a Law.

Additionally, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has published a number of reports on the legislative process. CRS reports are authoritative, objective, nonpartisan, and cover a wide range of topics. As an example, see the 2008 report: The Rise of Senate Unanimous Consent Agreements.

  • And don't forget, every time the Senate passes something using "unanimous consent," that's considered a unanimous vote.

    I once went to watch a friend of mine get confirmed by the Senate (as Sergeant at Arms of the Senate), and there were actually only four people present on the floor when they confirmed him.

    But he was able to say he was "unanimously confirmed by the Senate."

    So there's a difference between "unanimous consent" votes and unanimous votes by roll call in the Senate.