Choosing issues to rate is a challenge. In the Idaho legislature, not all issues easily lend themselves to idealogical acid tests.
In order to choose issues, I look for floor votes where there was a fairly clear traditional conservative position. FOR or Against Parental Consent, English as an Official Language, creating a new government program, etc. and then chose that vote as one of our scorecard items.

The issues I select have been discussed at one time or another by conservative bloggers, writers, and activists throughout the state, so most are quite well understood and well-known.

How Absences Are Counted

Members sometimes miss key votes due to unavoidable absences for health or family reasons. In my ratings, I don’t hold these absences against a legislator. Rather the votes for which they are absent are excluded from the final count. So, if a legislature voted the conservative position six times, and against it twice, and was the absent for the ninth vote, they would have a conservative rating of 75%.

What This Scorecard Seeks To Do

1) Explain How Your Representatives Voted on Specific Issues
2) Allow You to analyze how your representative votes to determine how you’ll vote on their re-election.
3) Honor Those Who Are Consistently Conservative
4) Identify Idaho’s Most Liberal

What It Doesn’t Do

1) Attack anyone’s character-This a scorecard not a personal attack. I acknowledge that good and honorable people may disagree with me.

2) Require 100% Adherence to get nominated or elected-I understand not everyone is going to agree 100% of the time. Nor would I say that someone who missed 1 or 2 votes on a particular year’s scorecard is not a conservative. Remember when reading our scorecard that we have a relatively small number of votes from which to draw, compared to the American Conservative Union which can use between 25-30 votes to form its rating. However, over three or four years of ratings, a clear picture of a member’s conservatism or liberalism should emerge.