Senate House   All Members Party Mavricks Party Loyalists Votes in  Explain

This program lists the number of votes that a legislator cast that were opposite of how the majority of the legislator's party voted on major issues.

If 0 is listed as the number of rollcalls covered, it means no signifcant votes have been cast so far in the year in the selected chamber. So, there are no member votes to be displayed.

When first loaded, the list will be all the current members in the legislature sorted by the number of times the legislator voted opposite from the majority of the member's fellow caucus member.

At the top of the list are buttons you can click to change the sort order of the listing. You also can change the list of members by changing the list category:

• All Members: Displays every member regardless of party-line votes.
• Party Mavericks: Displays members who voted at least once opposite of the majority of their party colleagues.
• Party Loyalists: Displays members who never voted at least once in agreement with the majority of their party colleagues.

The initial sort for most of the buttons when first clicked will be in ascending order with the second click of button sorting the list in descending order.

But for the number of maverick votes, the order will be reversed. The first click will be descending order and the second click puts the list in ascending order. The difference is based on the assumption most users will be initially interested in seeing the legislators who most often voted opposite the party line.

To see details about a particular legislator's vote(s), double click the vote line. That will display popup with a detailed list of votes cast by the member containing a description of each issue and a breakdown of the votes by party.

Technical Details MDN's roll-call database is restricted to votes considered signficant and/or news worthy.

Excluded are votes for which there was not a clear dominate issue, such as an omnibus bill containing multiple subjects making it impossible to ascertain a specific issue upon which a legislator was voting.

The categorization of a party maverick is based on yes/no votes and does not include absentees or "present" votes. If there is not a single yes/no vote contrary to the majority of the member's party, that member will be categorized as a party loyalist.

The list does not include legislators who did not serve the full year. It just seemed unfair to rank for a full session a legislator who served only part of the session.

In addition, these lists do not cover special sessions, but that feature may be added in the future.

Phill Brooks