A grassroots effort to shed light on how state legislators vote in Sacramento and whether or not those votes are reflective of their constituencies has yielded the People’s Report Card of California, an inaugural window into State Senate and Assembly members’ performance on what the group’s organizers deemed key issues for Californians.
The report was put together by the Courage Campaign, a member-group of a larger coalition of California “watchdogs” that seek to hold legislators accountable for their votes at the State Capitol. Its “courage score” ranked state lawmakers by their votes for or against 25 bills last year that ranged from bulking up climate change policies to social justice issues like creating a system to document and prevent racial profiling by law enforcement and closing the gender pay gap.