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Support

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a legislative scorecard work?

Organizations choose bills that align with their interests and enter a positive, negative or neutral rating for each bill. Depending on how a legislator votes on a bill, they receive positive, negative or zero points. Then we divide the points possible by the points they received and assign a score for the legislator.

Learn more about How to Build a Legislative Scorecard

Why do advocacy groups use legislative scorecards?

Scorecards make it easy to understand what’s happening in your state and congressional legislatures. They turn complex bills and voting records into simple, easy-to-read summaries — so you can see what’s being proposed and how your legislators are voting.

With over 100,000 bills introduced in state legislatures and over 17,000 bills introduced in congress every year, no one has time to track them all. That’s where scorecards come in. They help voters quickly identify which legislation matters most to them and which lawmakers share their values — making it easier to dig deeper, reach out to legislators, or make informed choices at the ballot box.

What features are included?

We’re constantly rolling out new features to make our scorecards more powerful, flexible and easy to use. Examples include:

Customizable Scoring

  • Customizable scoring formulas: adjustments are available for Absents and Sponsorships
  • Choose from multiple scoring outputs: Vote Index, Vote Index with Bonus, Total Score, or Letter Grades
  • Single-session or Lifetime Scoring options
  • Color coded scoring

Find Your Representative

  • Search for your representatives by address
  • Filter representatives by party, chamber, name, and score

Legislator Features

  • Voting record
  • Official legislator headshots
  • Current legislator contact info
  • Printable, black and white legislator voting records as PDFs. See Rep. Rick Krajewski's profile on ACLU-PA's scorecard and his corresponding printable PDF for an example.
  • Ability to show or hide: Bill Number, Bill Name, Bill Score, Your Comments, Date, Motion, Categories, Your Position, Vote information.

Learn more about our scorecard features.

How many years do you have data for?

We can have data from 2011 onward, since that’s when BillTrack50’s data starts.

If you want to use older data, contact us to see if we can do a manual integration.

Can I add a different comment on each legislators pages?

Not yet. That is a feature we have on our development roadmap to be released in the future.

Can I use this without a BillTrack50 subscription?

No. You must have a paid BillTrack50 Pro, Unlimited, or Enterprise subscription. BillTrack50 is an affordable Bill Tracking service that monitors and scrapes new bill and votes data.

Our software turns that data into meaningful information for your followers. So it requires a BillTrack50 API key, which you can request directly from BillTrack50.

Is this plugin only for WordPress sites?

Currently, yes. However, we can create a hosted WordPress microsite that houses the scorecard, if you’d like to use it. Also, we are actively working on integrating this into other platforms as well. If you would like to request a platform, please contact us.

How are you affiliated with BillTrack50

While we get regular feedback and input from BillTrack50, we are separate entities.

BillTrack50 is your data source. Their specialty is legislative tracking, so they are your database and backend for all bills and votes data. They include legislation updates 2x per day, alert you daily of legislation changes, and aggregate legislation data from various sources.

We are your web software provider. Our software is a layer on top of BillTrack50. We pull in your bills and votes data from their platform and display it on your website. We provide features, like: Find Your Legislator, search and filtering, and official legislator headshots that they don’t provide.

How are you affiliated with National Voter Registration Day?

We are Community Partners. As Partners, we volunteer our time and resources to help others register to vote or update their voter registration.

To learn more about National Voter Registration Day's impact, view their Annual Reports.

Do you archive and display historical data for all former legislators who are no longer in office?

If a legislator has left office but made a vote in your most recent scorecard, you can log into BillTrack50 and go to your scorecard. Then edit your scorecard’s settings via the ‘Manage’ tab to include out of office legislators in the scorecard. Then they will display along with any votes they made in previous years, if you’ve purchased our multi-year scorecard. Former legislator headshots will not display.

If are just wanting a historical archive of current and former legislators who were in office in years past, that’s not available in our scorecard.

Do you offer discounts for nonprofits?

The vast majority of our customers are non-profits, so our pricing is set accordingly.

Who do we contact for support or feature requests?

Best legislative scorecard examples

ACLU Pennsylvania

State Scorecard with Lifetime Scoring

Using our scorecard software, this scorecard does a great job of showing how to utilize Bill Comments with links and Categories.

AFL-CIO

Congressional Scorecard

This scorecard shows lifetime vs session score in a nice graph format.

Americans for Prosperity

Congressional Scorecard with Lifetime Scoring

Our partner since 2021, this scorecard includes a state map and legislator biographies.

Human Rights Campaign

Congressional Scorecard

If you're looking for a PDF-only option, this is an easy-to-scan format.

Can I print legislator pages?

Yes, our legislator pages output to black and white PDFs for easy printing. To see an example, go to Rep. Cheryl Acton, right-click the page, click Print. Save as a PDF.

I'd like to report an accessibility issue.

Please do! If you have feedback, questions or need assistance regarding accessibility on legislativescorecard.us or on any of our Legislative Scorecards, we are available to assist and provide guidance through the communication method that works best for you. Our team is available during regular business hours and your request will be answered as promptly as possible.

[email protected]
(720) 515-0993
Monday-Friday 9am-5pm MST

See our Accessibility Statement for additional information.

What company runs this service?

The Legislative Scorecard is built and maintained by Revive Design Studios, LLC. We're a team of web developers based in Denver, Colorado. You can visit our parent company website at https://revivestudios.io for more info.

Setup a Congressional or State Legislative Scorecard for your organization.