Scoring a Custom Action

VoterVoice imports vote data for roll call votes for the federal level and most states. Scoring something other than a roll call vote requires a custom action. Custom actions are often used to score officials for things such as:

• Committee votes
• Sponsorship and co-sponsorship
• Nomination and confirmation votes
• General support of issues

To score a custom action, click “new action” on the Scorecard Actions page.

On the Options page, set the action type to “custom.” You will then see fields that allow you to enter the name, date, session, explanation, etc… for your action.

Continuing forward to the Positions page will bring you to a chart with the names of the appropriate legislators and the possible positions you selected on the Options page. You can enter the votes / positions for any of those legislators who need it.

You do not need to fill out the votes / positions for every legislator. If someone is not assigned a value here, none will be automatically entered for them. The scored action will count neither for nor against them.

Continue forward from there, and you’re done! When you are ready to display the actions you have scored, you can do that through the Scorecard Layout tab.

Here is a short video on scoring a custom action.