Common Cause Rankings for Each Member of the House

Saturday, August 27, 2016

GoLocalProv News Team

Legislative leaders and top ethics advocates announcing sweeping ethics legislation this session. See how members ranked by their votes.

The 2016 legislative session was a historic year for ethics legislation as the Rhode Island General Assembly voted to pass a sweeping bill, which if approved by voters in November, will restore the Ethics Commission's oversight over the legislature. That was just one of many important ethics bills that Common Cause Rhode Island used to rank members based on their votes.

SLIDES: SEE EACH HOUSE MEMBER BELOW

Senator James Sheehan wrote in a Guest MINDSETTER™ column in GoLocal in June, “Ethics reform was not just a bill, but a journey. While it has taken us six long and arduous years to get ethics reform written into law, I am very pleased that the day has finally arrived.”

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

The vote on ethics legislation was just one of the many votes that Common Cause tracked and then ranked the voting records of each of the legislators.

Today, GoLocal presents the Common Cause voting record of the House of Representative and on Sunday, we present the Senate votes.

View Larger +

Common Cause’s Methodology

"Common Cause counted 16 Senate votes (weight equals 25) and 17 House votes (weight equals 32) from the Senate and House Journals in this two-year scorecard. Our lobbying, testimony, printed communications, or emails laid out Common Cause positions on most of the issues. In some cases, amendments proposed on the floor of the House and Senate focused the issue more clearly than final votes, or complimented votes on the entire bill. To better draw distinctions about what votes are most important to Common Cause, this scorecard utilizes a three-point scale for ranking votes:

1 Point – Routine pro-votes or anti-votes based on positions advocated by common cause;

2 Point – Votes that uphold or attack long-standing, clearly enunciated common cause principles; and

3 Point – Votes on legislation or resolutions initiated by common cause, or on issues of critical importance to government reform.

It’s important to note that Common Cause takes positions on issues based on concerns for process rather than issues of substantive public policy. The votes selected for this scorecard reflect that emphasis. A State Governing Board elected by the membership of Common Cause Rhode Island at its Annual Meeting each fall establishes our positions.

The votes are divided into issue areas, including Elections and Campaign Finance, Ethics and Lobbying Reform, Judicial Selection, Open Government and Rules and Separation of Powers. Within these issue areas the number of pro-votes is divided by the total possible in that area (e.g. 3 pro-Common Cause votes out of 4 results is a 75%). On some occasions lawmakers abstain, or recuse, on votes because of potential conflicts. In instances of recusal they are required by law to note the reason for the recusal in the House and Senate Journals.

Since the Rhode Island Supreme Court’s case in the Irons decision, however, no body exists to sanction legislators who do not recuse when they have a conflict. The formula used to calculate the final score is:

(Pro-votes) / ((Pro-votes + Anti-votes) + (Non-voting/2)) = (Final average)

Common Cause Rankings for Each Member of the House

Related Slideshow: 2016 Common Cause Legislative Rankings

Related Articles

Enjoy this post? Share it with others.

Sign Up for the Daily Eblast