Yes. You can the National Parks Action Fund’s Congressional Scorecard and read their case study.

For more examples, check out the American’s For Prosperity National Scorecard, Operative Plasterers’ & Cement Masons’ International Association’s Scorecard and the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability’s Scorecard.

Do you have examples of Congressional Scorecards?

In our filtering, we add the ability to filter by State.

On our legislator profile pages, we add official legislator biographies like you see on Americans for Prosperity’s legislator profile page.

We also include an optional map of the United States a user can click on, which allows them to filter by State. You can also see this on Americans for Prosperity’s scorecard.

How is the Congressional Scorecard different than the State Scorecard

Our most common FAQs and supporting documentation about congressional legislative scorecards.

Congressional Scorecards

Learn How to Build a Legislative Scorecard

How do I setup the BillTrack50 scorecard on my website using the Legislative Scorecard software?

Sign up for a free Citizen level account on BillTrack50.

In your Citizen account, click the free trial link to start a trial. The trial allows you to create your first Bill Sheet. Then, search for and add bills to a bill sheet. (You will later use this bill sheet to populate your scorecard.) Watch this video to learn how to start a free trial and search for bills.

Email Karen, Founder of BillTrack50, at Karen@LegiNation.com. Let her know you’re interested in demoing her scorecard feature to get it added to your trial account.

Add your Bill Sheet’s bills to your scorecard. For more on that, watch how to set up a scorecard or schedule a short scorecard demo with Karen.

How do I set up a scorecard on BillTrack50?

Your theme must have a full-width desktop template of 960px wide or wider to display this scorecard. If you don’t have one included, you could look at creating a child theme to add one.

We do not recommend using a page template that includes a sidebar, because our plugin comes with a built-in sidebar.

WordPress Theme Requirements

We support the same server system requirements as WordPress: PHP v7.4+, MySQL v5.6+, https/SSL, and the latest version of WordPress.

Server Requirements

Back up your site. Then set the WordPress permalink structure to ‘post-name’. Here’s an example.

The scorecard keeps showing a loading symbol and the scorecard fields in the WordPress admin ARE greyed out.

Go to BillTrack50.com and log into your account. If you’re not able to log in and view your bills, then BillTrack50 is likely down. Please let your contact at BillTrack50 know. Otherwise, if you are able to log into BillTrack50 and view bills, contact our team instead.

The scorecard keeps showing a loading symbol and the scorecard fields in the WordPress admin are NOT greyed out.

Legislator votes determine which legislators your scorecard grades and includes. If you’ve changed your scorecard to a new session, no legislators will show because they haven’t made any votes yet. To solve this, contact BillTrack50 and have them add a dummy bill in your BillTrack50 scorecard with a vote for each legislator. Once you get House and Senate votes, you can remove this dummy bill.

It’s the start of the new session and my legislators aren’t displaying.

It likely means the bill has been voted on in the House, but not the  Senate yet. You can view that bill’s current status in the detail  section of the individual BillTrack50 bill.

It’s the start of the new session and I only have votes for House members.

For new legislators, their headshots will pull in once they have cast a vote that has been pulled into your scorecard. If they do not display, contact us.

Some legislator headshots are missing

All legislator headshots are missing

Log into BillTrack50 and go to your scorecard. Edit your scorecard’s settings via the ‘Manage’ tab to include out of office legislators in the scorecard.

A legislator has left office this year but I still want to show them in my scorecard for the current year

Please contact us. Include your website url, a WordPress administrator login, and the names of the missing legislators.

Some legislators are missing after the above items are resolved.

Our most common FAQs and supporting documentation for your scorecard setup.

Installation & Setup

Vote Index, Total Scores, or Letter Grading. For any of these options, you can also set color-coded scoring ranges.

Vote Index scores display as 0-100 in the scorecard. Scores less than 0 display as 0. Scores greater than 100 display as 100.

Vote Index with Bonus Scores display as 0-100+ in the scorecard. Scores less than 0 display as 0. Scores greater than 100 display as 100, 101, 102, etc.

Total Scores are the total number of points and can display as positive or negative scores in the scorecard.

Letter Grading is based on the Vote Index scores. We then calculate those into letter grades for you. You can choose any scoring range for any letter grade.

What total scoring options are included?

Most organizations award a specific number of points per legislative action. Example:

Absent votes can also be removed from the total score so as not to hurt the legislator’s overall score.

Sponsoring or co-sponsoring in line bills +5 points

We may or may not be able to support “bonus points”, unless they are based on specific legislative actions which BillTrack50 has data for. Contact us for questions regarding your formula and we can help find out what’s possible.

What types of scoring formulas do you support?

We recommend keeping it as straightforward as possible to make it easy to understand for the general public. If you haven't published a scorecard before, something like the following is very effective and intuitive for most users:

0 points for bills you're neutral on or are monitoring

What scoring should I use on my scorecard?

Yes, when purchasing, you can choose to upgrade to a multi-year subscription that includes lifetime scoring. Once upgraded, lifetime scoring will display on each individual legislator’s page. We have not built this feature to display on landing page. See below for how this is laid out or view the National Parks Action Fund’s 2020 Congressional Scorecard or the ACLU-PA’s scorecard for live examples.

Can you do Lifetime Scoring?

Yes. That’s done in your BillTrack50 account. Watch this video (starting at 5:43mins) to learn how.

Can I weight votes for a bill?

Yes! That’s also done in your BillTrack50 account. Watch this video (starting at 5:43mins) to learn how Bill Rating is separate from Sponsor Rating.

Can I score Sponsorship of a bill?

Yes! That’s also done in your BillTrack50 account. You would just set the Sponsor Rating higher or lower than your other bill’s Sponsor Ratings. Watch this video (starting at 5:43mins) for an example.

Can I weight Sponsorship of a bill?

Yes. It’s a custom scoring option, so please allot a few extra days in your timeline for our team to add it.

Can I factor in scores for only Prime Sponsors of a bill?

Feature is in development: We are working on adding this feature to our scorecard in 2022. To prepare for this new feature launch, you can set up the data in BillTrack50 now.

Watch this video to learn how to set this up properly.

Can I score votes and add Comments on specific Amendments?

Yes! You can do that within BillTrack50 and it will sync into our scorecard software within a max of 30 mins. Watch this video (starting at 5:13) to learn how.

Can I edit the Bill Names in my scorecard?

Yes! You will write Comments in your BillTrack50 account under the Bill in your Scorecard. Watch this video (starting at 6:29mins) to see how.

To add a link within your Bill Comment, like in the ACLU Pennsylvania scorecard, log into BillTrack50. Under Scorecard > Legislator (tab) > Edit bill > Reference URL add a link to the page about that bill. In the URL Text field, you’d add what you want the link text to show up as on the scorecard.

Can I write my own Comment for each bill?

Yes. In BillTrack50, open your scorecard > Click the Manage tab > Look for Scoring Settings > Type in the Bill Categories you’d like to have available to use throughout the scorecard.

Then under Scorecard > Legislator (tab) > Edit bill > look for Categories. Add your Categories.

Can I add Categories to a bill?

Yes, we’ve automated it. Bills scored favorably have a Support position. Bills scored negatively have a Oppose position. Bills scored as 0 display a Neutral position.

Can I add my Organization’s Position on a bill?

That's fine by us! Scorecards may include both legislator and bill scores, only legislator scores, only bill scores, or no scores at all. It depends on the goals of the organization.

What if I don't want to include scores on my scorecard?

Our most common FAQs and supporting documentation about scoring formulas and bill scoring.

Scoring & Bills

Organizations choose bills that align with their interests and enter a positive, neutral or negative rating for each bill. When a legislator votes for or against a bill, they receive positive, zero or negative 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

How does a legislative scorecard work?

Internally, scorecards provide easy to interpret summaries of what new legislation is proposed and how legislators are voting. 

Publicly, they're used as educative tools for voters. On average, more than 109,000 bills are introduced in state legislatures each year. Most voters don't have the time to find and follow all of the proposed legislation that may affect them, but they know scorecards they typically align with. So it's an easy way for users to quickly find legislation that they may want to research further before contacting their legislator or hitting the ballot box.

Why do advocacy groups use legislative scorecards?

We’re constantly adding on new features. This is not an exhaustive list, but we include:

Vote Index, Vote Index with Bonus, Total Score, or Letter Grade Scoring

Search for your representatives by address

Sort and filtering by party, chamber, name, and score

Congressional Scorecards include State filtering a clickable US Map

State Scorecards include District filtering

Customizable default sorting by score, alphabetically, state or district

Customizable Send Message button on legislator pages

Voting record with links to the most recent bills with activity

Bill sponsorship info on each legislator profile

A link to a legislator’s full, public BillTrack50 profile containing recent bills they voted on, Sponsored Bills, Votes, Committees, Staff, and Biography. See this legislator’s example.

Official legislator headshots, updated annually

Printable legislator pages (black and white)

Any of these bill features can be easily turned on/off to match your preferences. For an example of most of these features turned on, visit Rep. Greg Vitali on ACLU-PA’s scorecard.

Comments section for each bill with link to more information about the bill

Bill Number, Bill Name, Score, Date, Motion, Vote information.

Position: Positive Bills show a Support position. Negative Bills show an Oppose position. Bills without scores show a Neutral position.

What features are included?

2022 planned development iteration includes:

Customizable Send Message button on legislator pages - Launched!

Mobile improvements to legislator profile tables

Accounts management system for easy account updates

What additional features are planned?

One year comes with the standard plugin. When purchasing, you can choose to upgrade to a multi-year subscription, which enables years from 2011 until today. Once upgraded, multiple years will display as tabs at the top of each individual legislator’s page.

1 Year: Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs

Multi-year: ACLU-PA or Rio Grande Foundation

How many years of scorecards can I have?

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

How many years back can you display data for?

Not quite yet, but that’s an incoming 2022 feature. BillTrack50 is working on adding this feature into their API. Once it’s added, then we will add it to our scorecard software too.

Can I add a different comment on each legislators pages?

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.

Can I use this without a BillTrack50 subscription?

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.

Is this plugin only for WordPress sites?

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 BillTrack50

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

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

Do you offer discounts for nonprofits?

Who do we contact for support or feature requests?

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

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

Congressional Scorecard with Lifetime Scoring

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

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

Best legislative scorecard examples

Our most common FAQs and supporting general documentation about our scorecard software.

Frequently Asked Questions

Definitely. Check out our State Scorecard example. Or view our case studies for examples and to learn how our scorecard service has directly gained the attention of legislators.

Do you have examples of State Scorecards?

In our filtering, we add the ability to filter by District.

How is the State Scorecard different than the Congressional Scorecard option?

Our most common FAQs and supporting documentation about state legislative scorecards.

Support

State Scorecards

Do you have examples of State Scorecards?

How is the State Scorecard different than the Congressional Scorecard option?

Contact us to setup a Congressional or State Legislative Scorecard for your organization.