To score a legislator you generally give them positive points for voting the way you wanted them to, and negative points for voting against what you wanted to happen. But what about when the legislator is absent, abstains, or otherwise doesn't vote Y or N? We have three ways you can account for these missing votes.
1. Count the missing vote as 0 points
Let's say you gave a particular bill 3 points. Giving a bill a positive number of points indicates that you would like it to pass. If a legislator votes Y they will get 3 points added to their total score and if they vote N they will have 3 points subtracted from their score. The default behavior of the scorecard is for legislators to get 0 points if they miss the vote or abstain. So that's not as many points as if they voted for the bill, but not as bad as if they voted against the bill.
The missed vote will still show up in the score in the "possible" column, which is the score they would have gotten if they voted correctly every time they had the chance. They *could* have voted correctly, but they missed the vote instead or abstained. The formula for the Vote Index column is
(Total Score + Possible Score) / (2 *Possible Score)
Which means a missed vote will reduce their Vote Index - their total score (numerator) increases by the vote's score, but the possible score (denominator) increases by twice the vote's score. This also means that if a legislator misses a vote you cared about they won't be able to get a perfect 100 on your vote index. If they miss all of their votes their score would be 1/2, or 50% - they didn't help you but they didn't hurt you, same as if they voted half right and half wrong.
2. Count the missing vote as if they voted the way the vote went
If you would like to count missed votes as more than a neutral 0, you can make that choice on the manage tab of the scorecard:
You can decide how much "credit" you want to give the legislator for the missed vote. 25%? 50%? 100%? The scorecard will score the legislator as if they voted the way the bill went, because by missing the vote they essentially helped whatever happened to happen. Thus if someone missed a vote but it turned out ok you don't penalize them as much (or at all if you went with 100%), but if they miss a vote and it went the wrong way you count that against them extra, by whatever percentage you entered. And we record absent votes (when the legislator was not present to vote for an approved reason) separately from abstain votes (the legislator was present, but chose not to vote) so you can assign different values for those circumstances.
For example, let's say you had a bill you were strongly opposed to, and therefore gave a score of -4. And let's also say you entered 25% as the Absent Vote Percent. Legislators who vote Yes lose 4 points, legislators who vote No gain 4 points. If the bill passes, you would be unhappy, so legislators who missed the vote lose 25% of the 4 points, or 1 point. But you may want to enter 50% for the Abstain Vote Percent, as being present but not voting is worse than missing the vote for an understandable reason. So any legislator who abstains would lose 50% of the 4 points, or 2 points.
If you leave the default zero as the Absent and Abstain Vote Percentages then legislators get 0 points for missed or abstained votes, and the situation in section 1 above applies.
3. Don't count the missing vote at all
You can also decide to not count the missing vote at all. To make this choice go to the manage tab of your scorecard and uncheck the Include Include Abstain and Absent Votes checkbox:
When you uncheck those boxes we will not include the score for the vote in the total score OR in the possible score (see discussion in section 1 above). By making this choice you are saying that missing votes should not affect the legislator's score at all. The total score will still be lower then if they had voted correctly on every vote, as they didn't gain points on the votes they missed. But they can still get a 100% in the vote index column if they voted correctly on every vote they did make. If they miss all the votes they will show a Possible of 0 and a Vote Index of 0.
Cover Photo by Tara Winstead