IMPORTANT NOTICE

The Congress members' scores published in VIS Report Cards have been calculated by Voter Information Services (VIS). The VIS scores have NOT been endorsed by the respective advocacy groups unless stated otherwise.

The sole purpose of VIS scores is to help voters understand what kind of legislation members of Congress supported or opposed. VIS does NOT support or oppose any member of Congress or advocacy group.

Many of the groups included in VIS Report Cards publish their own scores of members of Congress. These groups' scores and the VIS scores may be very similar, but they are not guaranteed to be identical. For more information about their differences, see the Frequently Asked Questions.

HOW TO INTERPRET VIS CONGRESSIONAL REPORT CARDS

QUICK ANSWER

Most of the bar graphs represent a score between 0 and 100.  Each score indicates how closely the position on legislation of a Congress member matched the position on the same legislation of an advocacy group during one year. 

For a member's position to match a group's position, the member would have to take one of the following actions:

VIS score: 0/12 NO match (between the member's and the group's position) (VIS Score = 0)
VIS score: 50/12 PARTIAL match (VIS Score = 50)
VIS score: 100/12 COMPLETE match (VIS Score = 100)
No Data No data available for this member, group, and year
Click here to see the Report Card detail Score not shown because (1) the group does not wish to score or rank Congress members, or (2) the score would be based on fewer than four votes or cosponsorships. 

You can still view the group's position on legislation, the member's position, and the legislation descriptions by clicking the bar graph.
Release Date: 15-Feb-00 The information has not yet been released, but will be soon. Point to the bar graph to see the release date.

 

If you place your cursor over one of the bar graphs, the actual VIS Score value will be displayed. This score consists of two numbers separated by the / character.

Here's an example. Place your cursor over the red-and-gray bar graph below.

Heflin, Howell (D)
U.S. Senator, Alabama

1996
Percentage of Support
American Civil Liberties Union ACLU VIS Score: 40/20

A small window should appear with the text VIS Score: 40/20 in it.  This can be interpreted as follows:
in 1996, there were 20 votes in the Senate and pieces of legislation introduced in the Senate that were considered important by the ACLU. On these votes and sponsorships of the introduced legislation, the level of agreement between the senator's position (as expressed by his voting record and being a cosponsor) and the ACLU's position was 40 on the scale between 0 and 100.

In the report cards, groups are identified by VIS-assigned abbreviations. However, you can display the full name of a group in a small pop-up window by placing the cursor on the purple dot to left of the group's abbreviation. Try that on the ACLU example above.

LONG ANSWER

ABOUT VIS CONGRESSIONAL REPORT CARDS (July 2002) 

VIS Congressional Report Cards (report cards) attempt to show the level of agreement between the position on legislation of members of the U.S. Congress and the position on legislation of various advocacy groups (AGs). 

For the purposes of our report cards, the position of a member is one of the following actions:

  1. A recorded vote in support of legislation supported by the AG or a vote against legislation opposed by the AG. 
  2. Being on record as an official (co)sponsor of legislation supported by the AG or NOT being a cosponsor of legislation opposed by the AG. (The number of cosponsors is important because it can determine whether a legislation is voted on by Congress or not.) 

Each VIS score consists of two numbers separated by a "/" (slash). The first number is the actual score between 0 and 100. The higher the score, the closer the match between the member's position and the group's position. The second number is the total number of votes and cosponsorships used in calculating the score. 

In most cases the score can also be interpreted as the percentage of all the votes and cosponsorships during which the member supported the AG's position. This is not true in those rare cases when an AG considered some votes more important than others. VIS takes this different weighting of certain votes and cosponsorships into consideration when calculating the ratings. 

The cases when a member, for whatever reason, did not vote are counted as if the member "acted" against the position of the group. An asterisk (*) following a score indicates that the member was ineligible to vote on some of the votes included in other members' scores from the same AG. This usually means the member was out or not yet in office for one or more votes or cosponsorships included in the score. 

The AGs often publish their own ratings which include descriptions of each piece of legislation, their position, as well as the voting record of each member of Congress. This information is frequently available from the groups' Web sites. 

The number of votes used to calculate the AGs' ratings might be small compared to the total number of votes taken during a year, but these are the votes the AGs consider most important or most indicative of the members' position on issues the AGs are most concerned about. 

Here is how we get the data we use: 

GROUP SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS

 The VIS scores for National Taxpayers Union (NTU), Concord Coalition (CONCR1, CONCR2), the Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC-E, RLC-L), and the Libertarian Party (LP-E and LP-P) need a more detailed explanation. 

Each year NTU ranks a large number of votes on different pieces of legislation according to their contribution to the overall federal government spending. To calculate NTU's scores, VIS selects between 10 and 20 of the votes identified by NTU as adding most to the federal government budget and uses the NTU's preferred position on these votes. 

The Concord Coalition calculates two scores for two categories of votes and then combines these two scores into an overall score for each member of Congress. We identified the votes the group used to calculate the two scores and calculated two scores - CONCR1 and CONCR2. 

The score CONCR1 includes votes that would result in a reduction of the overall government spending. The score CONCR2 represents the "appropriations composite" and is based on votes that only determine how a fixed amount of money gets spent and is considered less important by the AG. 

The group also calculates an overall score that you can determine using the following formulas: ((CONCR1/100)*17 + (CONCR2/100)*2)/19 [1993 House] 
((CONCR1/100)*22 + (CONCR2/100)*2)/24 [1993 Senate] 
((CONCR1/100)*20 + (CONCR2/100)*2)/22 [1994 House] 
((CONCR1/100)*16 + (CONCR2/100)*2)/18 [1994 Senate] 

NOTE: In 1995, the group dropped the CONCR2 rating. CONCR1 has become the only VIS score for the group. 

The Libertarian Party (LP) publishes their position on legislation which, in the group's opinion, effects our Economic Freedom and Personal Liberty. In our Report Cards, these labeled LP-E and LP-P respectively. 

LP also calculates the 'Libertarian Index' of each member of Congress using formula (LP-E + LP-P)/2. 

Similarly, the Republican Liberty Caucus also publishes their position on two sets of votes resulting in an 'Economic Freedom' and 'Civil Liberty' rating. 

Some groups consider cosponsorship of the "right" or "wrong" legislation when calculating their own ratings. This typically accounts for 10-15% of these ratings' value. With the exception of 1993 Public Citizen and 1994 League of Conservation Voters, pre-1995 VIS scores do NOT take into account cosponsorship of legislation. Starting with 1995 scores, cosponsorships are fully accounted for in VIS scores.