Get the Inside Scoop: Voting Histories

• Overview
• Example Use Case
  • Building your Vote Scorecard
  • Using your Vote Scorecard
  • Exporting your Vote Scorecard

Overview

Knowing a member’s voting history is key to helping your team or organization communicate with policymakers to further your initiatives. With Vote Scorecard, CQ can help you get that intel quickly and easily. 

Example Use Case

To illustrate how Vote Scorecard can help you understand legislator's voting histories, we'll be walking through an example use case. For this example, we'll focus on pulling a report of Senator. Kamala Harris's prior votes on energy. 

Building your Vote Scorecard

To build a report that shows a member's stance on a specific topic through votes during their tenure in Congress, (specifically Sen. Harris's stance on energy since her election in 2016), follow these steps: 

1. Head to 'Create' → 'Report' → 'Vote Scorecard.' Hit 'Choose.'
2. Once there, select 'Add by Searching' beneath the field for 'Votes' at the top of the page. 
3. Choose the sessions of Congress you want to include - for this example, we'll select all those Sen. Harris was present for.
4. Then, select the legislator's chamber, (in this case, the Senate) and the Subject of you wish to pull. By selecting Energy, this will pull all votes taken in the 115th and 116th Congress on or around Energy as a topic. 
5. Hit 'Build Report' and then 'Add all # votes to report.' This will take all Energy votes in the Senate from the 115th and 116th Congress and place them in your eventual Vote Scorecard.
6. Now it's time to add your members. Click the text box to add members by name - in this case, Sen. Harris. 
7. Click 'Build Report.'

Using your Vote Scorecard

Now that you have your Vote Scorecard on Sen. Harris's voting history on energy, it's time to make use of it. On first glance, you'll see all the vote numbers, the year they occurred and what Sen. Harris's position was. 

If you scroll down, you'll see an option for viewing 'Roll Call Votes and Captions.' Click 'See all roll call votes and captions' to see descriptions of the vote, the title of the vote, the breakdown along party lines, and the date the vote was taken. 

You can also see the vote descriptions per the vote number by clicking from the report itself. This is a fantastic way to truly understand Sen. Harris's positions on energy over time.

Exporting your Vote Scorecard

If you'd like to share your Scorecard, simply click 'Export' and select the file type. 

Once exported, you'll be able to see the votes taken in chronological order as well as the roll call descriptions and breakdowns along party lines. Feel free to print, email or send to whomever you'd like.