Extra Credit:
Citizens for Global Solutions recognizes that legislators make important contributions to global issues that are often not reflected in roll call votes. Rather than ignoring this leadership, we strive to incorporate it into our final grades by awarding Extra Credit to legislators who promote our core issues outside the arena of recorded votes. Examples include sponsorship of legislation, op-eds, floor speeches and other public statements. For more information on which lawmakers were awarded extra credit and why, visit www.globalsolutions.org/reportcard .

Methodology:
Each of the 20 votes are given a “vote weight” in order to reflect the importance of the legislation to our organization’s core values (with “3” as the highest weight). In order to calculate a legislator’s grade, we first determined a percentage rating by adding the weighted value of the legislator’s total favorable votes and dividing by the sum of all the weighted values on which that person voted. We then set letter grade parameters by taking the range of percentage scores and dividing by the number of letter grades (12) to determine the range of each letter grade parameter. Finally, if a legislator was eligible to receive extra credit, he/she received up to one full letter grade higher than his or her converted percentage grade. The amount of extra credit given to a legislator was determined by the extent to which the eligible legislator promoted our core issues. Legislators could only achieve a grade of A+ if he or she received extra credit.

NEWLY ELECTED MEMBERS:
Newly elected members of Congress who began their service in 2007 received an (I) for insufficient information.