How WyoVote Ratings Work

Three levels: roll call, bill, ranking

1. A roll-call vote is scored

Each recorded floor or committee vote gets one score from −3.000 (liberal) to +3.000 (conservative). Decimals are allowed (for example 1.333). The score follows the WyoVote Bill Rating Guide categories below. Procedural motions with no policy content score 0.000. Floor votes use positive IDs; committee votes use negative IDs.

2. A bill is not one score

One bill can have many roll calls. The bill itself isn’t ranked; only roll-call scores feed the legislator rating. See step 7 below.

3. The legislator rating and ranking

• Aye = +score for that roll call.
• Nay = −score (sign flip).
• Rating = sum of those signed values ÷ number of Aye + Nay votes.
• Zero-score roll calls are included in the count.
• Excused, Absent and Conflict are not counted; they are tallied separately.
• Ratings are rounded to 3 decimals before ranking.
• Legislators are ranked by that average (most conservative = Rank 1).
• Legislators with the same average get consecutive ranks in roster order and share a band.
• Color bands: Conservative / Moderate / Liberal. The bands group legislators who voted most alike in that session, split at the natural breaks in the ranking, so band sizes differ from session to session; legislators with the same result share a band. The same session-wide bands (both chambers together) are used on every report: Ranked and Alpha, full and 1-page, each with House and Senate sections.

A legislator must have at least 25% of the session’s maximum counted votes to be ranked. Legislators below that line are shown as Not ranked and are footnoted in each report: JD Williams in 2021, J.R. Riggins in 2025, and Tom Kelly in 2026.

How a roll-call vote gets its score

1. Every recorded vote is scored. Each floor or committee roll call gets one score from −3.000 (most liberal) to +3.000 (most conservative). Decimals are allowed, and 0.000 means neutral or procedural.
2. Scores follow the WyoVote Bill Rating Guide (below). The guide pairs conservative and liberal values, such as smaller vs. larger government, individual freedom vs. government control, the 2nd Amendment, property rights and religious freedom. Most policy scores note the guide item or items they rely on; procedural and dollar-formula scores do not.
3. Direction: more spending, taxes, regulation or bureaucracy scores liberal (negative); less scores conservative (positive).
4. Size: a bigger change scores further from zero, and a small one scores close to zero. When a bill mixes conservative and liberal parts, the parts are weighed, and a roughly even mix scores near zero. For most bills the size is the scorer’s judgment; only the state budget uses a set formula (step 6).
5. Procedural and neutral votes score 0.000. That covers motions with no policy content, such as suspending the rules, and bills that are purely administrative or technical.
6. State budget amendments (HB0001/SF0001) are scored by dollar size. The amendment’s dollar changes are added up, with general fund dollars counted in full and other funds at half. The bigger the weighted change, the larger the score, as shown in this table:

   Weighted dollar change	Score
   Up to $50,000	0.167
   Over $50,000 up to $400,000	0.333
   Over $400,000 up to $1.5 million	0.667
   Over $1.5 million up to $5 million	0.833
   Over $5 million up to $20 million	1.000
   Over $20 million up to $40 million	1.167
   Over $40 million up to $300 million	1.333
   Over $300 million	1.667

   An increase is negative and a cut is positive. Amendments with no readable dollar figures are scored by hand (in 2023 some were given 0.000).
7. One bill, many votes. Introduction, referral, readings, committee votes, final passage and concurrence share the bill’s single score, except procedural motions, which score 0.000. In 2022–2023, conference reports and full-bill veto overrides took the bill’s score, and line-item veto overrides scored 0.000. From 2024, each amendment, conference report and veto override is scored on its own. In 2022 and 2023, some amendments were not scored individually and count as 0.000 (6 in 2022, 55 in 2023).
8. An Aye adds the vote’s score and a Nay subtracts it, so a Nay on a conservative bill counts as a liberal vote. Votes where a legislator was excused, absent or had a conflict are left out.
9. A legislator’s result is the average: the summed scores divided by the number of Aye and Nay votes. Legislators are ranked by that result and placed in the color bands described above.

Bill Rating Guide (evaluation table)

Policy scores cite one or more of these #g_Guide 2c codes; procedural votes (0.000) do not. There is no 0800 in the guide. Scale meaning: +3.000 = most conservative, 0.000 = neutral or procedural, −3.000 = most liberal.

Logic flow

Standard flowchart symbols: rounded = Start/End, parallelogram = data, rectangle = process, diamond = decision, wavy document = reports.