SCORECARD · DERRICK VAN ORDEN accountability readout

Derrick Van Orden dossier →

Republican U.S. House · WI-3 full conduct profile →
78/100
HIGH CAPTURE-RISK INDEX
How this number is built ↓
Silence risk25%
95
Contradiction risk25%
98
Connection density20%
49
Donor influence10%
72
Fact density10%
65
Constituency deviation5%
64
Voting misalignment5%
0

Weighted composite, 0–100. Identical to the figure on the Congress monitor. Each bar is the component's normalised 0–100 contribution before weighting.

01

Silence on donor-funded topics 8

Topics where donors have documented interests but the official has no public statement on record. Silence is the absence of expected speech — not proof of intent.

All silence flags for Derrick Van Orden →
02

Vote-vs-platform contradictions 2

Roll-call votes that contradict the official's own stated platform commitments. Each links to the bill and the contradiction rationale.

40% of 5 rated votes contradicted the stated platform
  • H.R. 5658 ↗ NAY 2026-03-05
    Agriculture Committee Farm Bill Markup — Amendment to Repeal SNAP Cuts from Republican Tax Law
    why contradicted?
    [against_constituent] Van Orden, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, voted against restoring SNAP cuts that were already harming families in his district. He also voted against $17 billion in additional farm relief and against funding for rural hospitals. As a member representing a district with 78,000 SNAP recipients and a significant agricultural economy, his committee votes directly contradicted constituent material interests while aligning with Republican leadership's fiscal priorities.
  • H.R. 1 ↗ YEA 2025-07-03
    One Big Beautiful Bill Act — On Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendment
    why contradicted?
    [against_constituent] Van Orden voted for a bill projected to cut $880 billion from Medicaid and $230 billion from SNAP over 10 years. His district has a poverty rate of 11.7% (approximately 87,000 residents), 78,000 SNAP recipients, and an estimated 30,000 constituents at risk of losing health coverage. Rural hospitals in his district faced closure risks. Van Orden then publicly claimed the bill 'strengthened and protected Medicaid' — a characterization directly contradicted by the nonpartisan CBO analysis.
Full voting record + platform comparison →
03

Broken promises 1

Documented public commitments paired with the documented action that broke them. Each carries a primary-source citation for the violation.

  • Derrick Van Orden: 'benefits will not be cut,' then voted for the Medicaid cuts BROKE · 2025-07-03
    On July 3, 2025, Van Orden voted Yea on H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Roll Call 190, passed 218-214), which the Congressional Budget Office projected would cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the following decade and leave millions more Americans without health coverage. Only two House Republicans voted no.
    full promise record → · violation source ↗
04

Documented contradictions 6

Stated-position-vs-revealed-conduct contradictions analysed against the official's commitments, scored by strength of the contradiction.

  • statement_vs_disclosure SCORE 90
    Van Orden campaigns as a veterans' champion and chairs the VA Economic Opportunity Subcommittee, yet publicly urged the VA Secretary to cut the Department of Veterans Affairs and threatened a disabled veteran and fired VA employee with referral to DOGE — actions at odds with his self-portrayal as a defender of veterans.
  • platform_vs_vote SCORE 90
    Van Orden campaigned on protecting SNAP, citing his own childhood experience with food stamps. Days after pledging to protect the program, he voted to advance the Agriculture Committee bill containing the largest SNAP cut in the program's history — a clear platform-versus-vote contradiction.
  • statement_vs_disclosure SCORE 90
    Van Orden explicitly said the budget resolution 'did not include any cuts to specific programs' and pledged to 'have no part in cutting these programs.' He then voted for H.R. 1, which CBO analysis projected would cut $880 billion from Medicaid and $230 billion from SNAP — a direct contradiction between his public assurances and his legislative actions.
  • platform_vs_vote SCORE 60
    Van Orden signed a public pledge during his campaign to support and cosponsor a congressional term limits amendment. Once in office, he refused to cosponsor the bill, leading the pledge's sponsor to place billboard ads in his district calling him out for breaking his word.
  • same_source_inconsistency SCORE 30
    [auto-downgraded: both claims come from the same source host] Van Orden called rape and incest exceptions to abortion 'evil' and was endorsed by Wisconsin Right to Life. In 2024, as he faced a competitive reelection in a swing district, he denied ever having opposed abortion exceptions — a complete reversal on the same policy question of whether abortion bans should include exceptions for rape and incest.
  • same_source_inconsistency SCORE 30
    Van Orden repeatedly denied entering the Capitol grounds on January 6, but photographic evidence showed him on a wall inside a restricted area requiring crossing police barricades. Both claims are documented in the same investigative article by The Daily Beast. Both quotes come from the same secondary source; editors should note this for visibility downgrading.
Contradictions ledger →

What this scorecard does and doesn't claim

Every figure above is a count of records the platform already holds, each click-through-able to its source. The scorecard adds no inference, no forecast, and no narrative — it aggregates what is documented.

A populated scorecard is not a finding of corruption. It documents the volume of stated-vs-revealed tension, donor-adjacent silence, and broken commitments on the public record for this official. Silence in particular is the absence of an expected statement; it can have innocent explanations and is never presented as proof. Read each item's source before drawing conclusions.

⌗ Cite this
Permalinkhttps://www.goblinhouse.net/scorecard/congress-v000135
CitationGoblin House. "Derrick Van Orden — Responsibility Scorecard" (accountability scorecard). Goblin House — The Architecture of Secrecy. Accessed October 19, 2026. https://www.goblinhouse.net/scorecard/congress-v000135.

Sourced from public records and content-hashed; verify via /attestation, standard at /methodology.