WBOB Original Reads

Interactive Legislator Scorecard: Town of Warren Ranks Last

10/22/2014

With elections just two weeks away, voters can now dynamically review the legislative performance of their elected officials over the past three years thanks to a new online tool - Freedom Index Live - launched today by the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, as a follow up to the release last week of its third-annual General Assembly Freedom Index and Legislative Scorecard.

With the ability to filter and sort by score, year, legislator, district, town, party, chamber, and/or legislative category, voters now have access to an unprecedented new tool that can help them hold their elected officials accountable for their voting records. The user-friendly, live Freedom Index produces colorful charts and sortable tables based on filter criteria determined by the viewer.

As an example of the type of charts and findings that voters can produce on their own:

The town of Warren saw its House and Senate General Assembly delegation achieve the lowest score among all 39 cities and towns over the past two years, indicating that this delegation was the most oppressive in voting for legislation that infringed upon individual, economic, and educational freedom. Conversely, the town of East Greenwich, although scoring in the negative, saw its delegation as the least oppressive.

Viewers can de-select certain legislators to see how their city or town would have scored if that legislator were not in office.

Rep. Chris Blazejewski scored the lowest among all 113 state legislators over the past two years, while Rep. Brian Newberry topped the list and was the only legislator in positive territory over this period

In a static look at the 2014 rankings, not a single legislator scored above zero. Every legislator has the opportunity to achieve an indexed score ranging from +100 to (-100) depending on how they voted on each bill.

For more information visit the Center's Freedom Index homepage at RIFreedom.org/FreedomIndex.

A listing of all rated 2014 bills and how each legislator voted on them can be downloaded here.