The news and commentary site Forward Kentucky has released its annual Legislator Scorecard, scoring each legislator on 51 bills that the site took a position on.
The scorecard rates each legislator on two factors: the percentage of the time that they voted in line with ForwardKY’s position on the bill, and the total points they received both for their votes and for whether they were a sponsor on one of the bills.
For example, if a bill was Strongly Supported by the site and a legislator voted for the bill, their vote would count in their voting percentage, and they would get 5 points in the point total. If they also sponsored the bill, they would get an additional point. But, if the legislator voted against the bill, it would count against them in the voting percentage, and they would get 5 points subtracted from their point total.
“The positions we took on bills were in line with our progressive editorial stance, for the most part,” said Bruce Maples, publisher. “So, it is not surprising that the highest-rated legislators in our scorecard are Democrats.
“Two things that were surprising were the large gap between the two parties — larger than we have seen in the past — and the fact that there was no overlap between the two parties. In the past we have always had some overlap between moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats. Both the gap and the lack of overlap will probably continue to increase as the Republican party moves further to the right,” said Maples.
In the scorecard, the top ten legislators by voting percentage are:
Denise Harper Angel – 99.0
Reginald Thomas – 99.0
Josie Raymond – 98.3
Karen Berg – 98.0
Tina Bojanowski – 97.2
Lisa Willner – 96.6
Rachel Roberts – 96.3
Buddy Wheatley – 95.7
Derrick Graham – 95.7
Joni Jenkins – 95.7
The top ten legislators by point total are:
Josie Raymond – 175
Tina Bojanowski – 172
Lisa Willner – 169
Rachel Roberts – 169
Buddy Wheatley – 168
Derrick Graham – 166
Joni Jenkins – 165
Ruth Ann Palumbo – 162
Nima Kulkarni – 156
Patti Minter – 155
The scorecard is available at https://forwardky.com/bill-tracker-legislator-scorecard/. It includes a list of the bills chosen for scoring, the ForwardKY position on each bill, how each legislator voted on each bill, what bills the legislator sponsored, an information page for each legislator, and numerous other features. The scorecard page also includes details on how to use the scorecard and a description of the various tabs.
--30--
