How we score

We measure what legislators have done in office rather than what they say or might do, and no score is meant to reward a party or a point of view. We'd rather show a few numbers we can stand behind than a dozen we can't, so each new score is explained here before it appears on a profile. Legislators help shape the model through our scoring survey.

A profile lists every bill the legislator has sponsored, session by session, with how far each one got: became law, vetoed, failed, withdrawn or still pending. Primary sponsors, who introduce a bill and lead it, are kept apart from co-sponsors, who sign on in support.

Of the bills a legislator led as primary sponsor, we take those that were decided (became law, vetoed or failed) and show the share that became law. Bills still pending and bills withdrawn by their sponsor are left out, so no one is marked down for a bill that's still moving, and so are resolutions, since most of them state a chamber's view rather than change the law.

Say a senator led ten bills in a session that has ended. Six became law, two failed, one was vetoed and one was withdrawn. The withdrawn bill is set aside, and six of the nine decided bills became law, for a passage rate of 67 percent.

A profile adds up every completed session on file into one rate for the whole career, and shows each session on its own beneath it. A session still under way isn't counted until it ends, because the bills decided early in a session are seldom a fair picture of how it finishes.

The same rate can be read three ways: for the bills a legislator led, for the bills they co-sponsored, and for every bill they led or co-sponsored, each counted once. Leading a bill and signing on to one are different kinds of work, and seeing all three gives a fuller picture than any one of them alone.

Beside each legislator's rate we show the rate for all the bills in their chamber over the same sessions. Passing a bill is harder in some legislatures than in others, and a city council, a statehouse and Congress each take on work of a different scope, so a rate means most beside its own chamber's.

A few sessions aren't counted yet, and a profile says so when one of its sessions is missing. In some older records, most of them from before about 2013, the legislature listed everyone who sponsored a bill without marking who led it. The first name listed is often the lead sponsor, so the order makes a reasonable guess, but a guess isn't the record, and we'd rather leave a session out than score someone on it. We're checking those records against other sources before we bring them into the score.

Legislatures also differ in how they record sponsors, and their rules change from time to time. The Texas House, for one, allows a bill only one primary author, while the Texas Senate allows many, so we follow each chamber's own rules. Where the record doesn't settle who led a bill, we leave the session out rather than guess. Short organizational sessions, held to swear in members and choose leaders, aren't scored either.

Each bill is filed under one or more subjects, such as education or health, and tallying a legislator's bills by subject shows where their work is concentrated. The committees they serve on fill in the rest, since committees review the bills on their subject before the full chamber votes.

Scores for how legislators keep in touch with their districts, and for how their work lines up with what their districts care about, come in 2027 and beyond. Each will be explained on this page before it appears on a profile.

• Bills, sponsors, outcomes, subjects and committee assignments: the official records of each state legislature and of Congress, gathered through public legislative data services. We correct mistakes as we find them.
• City and county officials: collected by our team from public sources.
• Your districts, when you enter an address: Geocodio, an address lookup service. We keep only the districts, never the address.
• The number of local governments in the country (90,837): U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Census of Governments.

The words used here are defined in our glossary.