About the Scorecard

The annual Scorecard represents the consensus of experts from more than 20 respected environmental, environmental justice, and conservation organizations. As members of the Scorecard Advisory Committee, these experts propose the key votes LCV should score.

LCV scores votes on the most important issues of the year, including clean air and water, energy, climate change, environmental and racial justice, public health, public lands and oceans, transportation, wildlife conservation, justice and democracy, worker protection, and spending for environmental programs. Many factors are considered when selecting top priority votes, such as national importance, breadth of issues covered, and racial and environmental justice implications, among others.

We would like to thank the dedicated experts who are an integral part of the selection of votes for the Scorecard, including the Board of Directors, the Issues & Accountability Committee, and the Scorecard Advisory Committee.

Legislators’ annual scores are based on a scale of 0 to 100. We calculate scores by dividing the number of pro-environment votes cast by the total number of votes scored, except for excused absences and those for which a member was ineligible to vote.

Lifetime scores are calculated in the same manner so that each vote counts equally, rather than being the average of annual scores, which would assign different weights to votes since the total number of votes scored varies from year to year.

Legislators’ votes are indicated by the following symbols:

A check mark indicates a pro-environment vote

An x indicates an anti-environment vote

A question mark indicates a missed or ‘present’ vote, both of which are counted as anti-environment

A capital E indicates a missed vote that was excused. Starting in the 2019 Scorecard, votes missed by members of Congress due to family or medical leave or disasters in their district are treated as excused absences. While these votes do not count as a pro-environment vote, they are removed from the total vote count and do not count against a member’s score.

The not applicable category indicates votes that a member was ineligible to take, for example after resigning, before being sworn in, or in the case of delegates, votes not in the Committee of the Whole. It also includes the speaker of the House who votes only at their discretion and members of Congress who were not assigned a score due to illness or death.

In rare and exceptional cases, to show the importance of a vote or environmental issue, we may choose to score a single vote twice. These votes will display as two separate lines in the online Scorecard with the second vote entry delineated as (2x Score).

In rare circumstances, particularly  in years lacking votes on a high priority issue, we elected to score whether or not a member of Congress cosponsored a bill. In such an instance, there is no corresponding roll call vote cited. In just a few cases over the years, we elected to score signing onto a letter or signing onto a “discharge petition” — a measure that automatically allows a floor vote on an underlying bill if signed by at least 218 House lawmakers.

Since 2019, we have displayed the votes of the five House delegates representing American Samoa, District of Columbia, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as the resident commissioner representing Puerto Rico. Delegates’ voting status can change, depending upon the rules set by the majority in a given Congress; sometimes they can vote in the Committee of the Whole, though they are not permitted to cast the deciding vote.

Although the more than 4 million residents of the federal district and these territories lack full voting representation in Congress, we made this change as part of our organizational focus on racial justice and equity, and to better represent those communities of color bearing the brunt of climate change’s effects. We hope that the presence of these representatives in the Scorecard will remind readers of the need for greater representation and rights in our democracy.

We categorize each scored vote into one or more of the following 16 issues:

• Appropriations – Funding or messaging votes on environmental, democracy, or justice-related issues in appropriations bills or amendments.
• Agriculture – Votes on agriculture, farm-related conservation programs, and environmentally beneficial agricultural practices, including votes related to the Farm Bill.
• Clean Air – Votes on air pollution, including votes related to the Clean Air Act.
• Clean Energy – Votes on clean renewable energy and energy efficiency.
• Clean Water – Votes on water quality and quantity issues and water pollution, including votes related to the Clean Water Act.
• Climate Change – Votes directly related to global warming pollution and increasing climate resilience for communities and wildlife.
• Confirmations – Votes on judicial or agency nominations
• Dirty Energy – Votes on polluting energy sources, including conventional fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal; non-conventional fossil fuels such as tar sands; and harmful subsidies for fossil fuels.
• Environmental Justice – Votes that either advance or undermine the equitable treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin or income in respect to protection from environmental hazards, ensuring access to a healthy environment, decisions impacting their communities, as well as the redress of historic harms.
• Justice & Democracy – Votes on priority legislation to safeguard our democracy and advance racial justice, as well as an array of equity issues outside the traditional environmental space – including but not limited to labor rights and issues related to race, immigration status, gender, sexuality, ability, and socioeconomic status – that are inextricably linked to the well-being of people and the environment.
• Public Lands & Oceans – Votes addressing public lands and oceans conservation, including wilderness designations, federal land management agencies, logging, mining, grazing, and fisheries management.
• Public Engagement & Right to Know – Votes on the public’s right to know about pollution and risks of environmental harms and to meaningfully engage in environmental issues impacting their communities, including in the National Environmental Policy Act process.
• Transportation – Votes on transportation and clean vehicles policy, including tailpipe emissions limits, fuel efficiency standards, biking and walking infrastructure, public transit, and rail.
• Toxics – Votes on the use of and exposure to toxic chemicals (including pesticides) and cleaning up Superfund sites.
• Wildlife – Votes on fish (freshwater and saltwater) and wildlife issues, including the Endangered Species Act.
• Other – A broad catch-all category that could include votes on the rights of workers to organize, changes to the regulatory process, financial regulatory rules, trade, and eminent domain/takings, among other issues.

Close observers will notice slight discrepancies between some of the printed Scorecards (see the Scorecard Archives for PDF copies) and the online Scorecard. This is primarily due to a couple of factors:

a) Changes over time in how missed votes are scored
Today, missed, unexcused votes count the same as an anti-environmental vote, and excused absences are not included in the score calculation. Prior to 1987, missed votes were not counted with equal weight to anti-environmental votes. Certain missed votes were excused and did not negatively affect a member of Congress’s score. For unexcused absences, members’ annual scores were calculated using only votes for which they cast a vote, and then docked between one and three points for each unexcused missed vote.

b) Previous Scorecards covering two years instead of one
In some of the early years, a single Scorecard was issued for a two-year period and thus a single score was calculated for a two year period. However, in the online Scorecard all annual scores are calculated solely on a yearly basis.

Many zip codes are divided into two or more congressional districts. To find your representatives, enter your full address. Your address is used only to find your district and is not stored.

In a member search box, select the “By Last Name” search option and check the “Include former members of Congress in search results” box.

Throughout the current year, we keep track of votes affecting the environment and democracy that may be considered for scoring in the upcoming Scorecard (see Recent Votes), but we do not score those votes or calculate annual scores until the end of the year’s legislative session.

There are two main reasons; see “Why are there sometimes discrepancies between the printed report and the online database?” above.

Yes! Visit the Scorecard Archive to find all prior Scorecards available as PDF files.

Yes! With the filter options available on vote listings, member of Congress listings and individual member scores on their profiles, a link to “Export filtered data” as a CSV file is available. If you have any questions about accessing current and historic Scorecard data please contact feedback(at)lcv(dot)org.

Yes! Locate the member you are interested in either by searching in the search box on the main page or by selecting their name from the full list on the Members of Congress page.  Clicking on their name will take you to their page. Then click on the tab labeled “Annual Scores” to see how they performed each year. If a member left Congress and returned several years later, only the years they served will appear in the list.

In rare and exceptional circumstances, we may choose to score a single vote twice, because the vote had such profound consequences. When a vote is scored twice, that vote will appear in the list along with an exact copy with “(2X Score)” in the vote name. See “How does LCV calculate scores?” above for more details on scoring.

Yes! The easiest way to do this is to see the U.S. map on the Congressional Scorecard page, use the horizontal sliding scale to select a year, and click on the state that interests you.

Charts allow you to look at how Congress has performed on environmental issues over time. You can look at one or both chambers, individual state delegations in each chamber, and issue categories by using the filter options.

AL stands for “at large.” While every state has two Senators, some low-population states only have one member of Congress who represents the entire state. “At large” signifies that only one member represents an entire state in the U.S. House.

Every ten years, there is a constitutionally required census. Changes in population can lead Congress to reapportion the number of House seats per state. States then redistrict their new portion of the 435 U.S. House seats. States with populations that increased significantly over the previous decade could gain seats, while states with populations that grew little or decreased could lose seats.

These “votes” are actually co-sponsorships, sign-on letters, or discharge petitions. Even when no votes are cast, the impact on the environment may still be significant. Read the vote description to learn why.

LCV spent months proofreading and verifying the data by comparing it to our own internal records as well as independent sources like the House and Senate clerks, and the Library of Congress. However, if you encounter any issues or just want to give us some feedback on the site, email us at feedback(at)lcv(dot)org and we will look into the matter.