Legislative scorecard

State legislative scorecards
Legislative scorecards by state
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A legislative scorecard is a device that organizations and newspapers use in order to compare and contrast the philosophical and political beliefs of the members of one or more state legislatures.

When preparing a legislative scorecard, a newspaper or organization typically reviews all the votes cast by the members of a state legislature in a recent legislative term. The organization that produces a legislative scorecard chooses the bill votes that, in their view, most clearly demonstrate a legislator's political inclinations. A legislative scorecard ordinarily features between eight and 15 votes that the organization believes clearly establish the political stances of the legislators in a state. The organization then determines how each legislator voted on those particular bills and creates a legislative scorecard for each legislator.

Organizations that prepare legislative scorecards typically also assign a percentage value to each legislator. For example, if a liberal group believes that there were 10 key votes in a state legislature and a "yes" vote on all of them means that a particular legislator is completely in line with the views of that organization, and a particular legislator voted "yes" on eight of the bills, that legislator would be assigned an "80%."

See also

• State legislative scorecards