Tracking Legislatures
The first step in selecting votes is tracking the legislatures. When performing your tracking duties, you should always keep in mind the criteria for selecting votes:
- The vote should be helpful in portraying how a member of the legislature stands on a particular issue.
- The vote should be clear for any individual to understand, meaning the intention of the "Yea" or "Nay" vote is understandable.
- The vote has received media attention.
- The vote was passed or defeated by a relatively close margin, meaning there should be a sizable number of "Yea" and "Nay" votes. It doesn't need to be extremely close margin, and you should consider the partisan breakdown of the state. If you're dealing with a legislature with a lopsided majority (Massachusetts, Hawaii, and Alabama, for example), allow for more leniency when considering this criteria.
- If specific legislation is consistently inquired about on the Hotline, the vote should be considered for selection.
- If an adviser suggests we select a vote, the vote should be considered for selection.
It is important that you familiarize yourself with the aforementioned criteria before you begin tracking because that will largely determine whether you will bring a vote up for selection. The third selection criteria ("The vote has received media attention") is particularly important. Press coverage is usually the first thing to tip us off to a vote, and tracking boils down to monitoring media outlets that are likely to provide coverage of votes.
The following steps are essential to ensure that the U.S. Congress and state legislatures are being properly tracked:
- Allocating Legislatures Among Staff Members
- Tracking the Press
- Creating the Press File
- Tracking Links
One point must be stressed: timely and thorough tracking is absolutely necessary for the viability of the department. Tracking work is not something that should be set aside for another time; it's extremely easy for a vote to slip under the radar. Should this happen, it's a problem that is not easily solved. A portion of the day must be set aside to check on each legislature that is in session.
It's also important to keep tabs on which states are in session, including any special sessions that come up. Sessions should be added to the Key Votes calendar for easy tracking. The National Conference of State Legislatures also has good information on states currently in session. You can use their state legislative calendar to track current sessions-- just change the year in the URL to the current year.
It's also worth noting that Texas, Montana, North Dakota, and Nevada only have biennial sessions, meaning they only convene every two years. You should still keep tabs on all four, though, as special sessions are always a possibility.
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