The past election has drawn attention to various scores of elected officials on the scorecards of advocacy groups across the state and the country. Several of the groups released scorecards that, to put it bluntly, just didn’t make sense. We saw NRA scorecards that gave a legislator that cosponsored a Red Flag Law an “A” while a legislator that authored a Constitutional Carry bill a “C”.
The American Conservative Union appears to have given every republican legislator in Wisconsin a “92” rating suggesting a serious flaw in their scoring. In addition to the folly of suggesting that the ultra-moderate Joel Kitchens who has voted for legislation that destroys the Wedding Barn industry (which will most likely be overturned in court), and voted for abortion until birth, authored the ranked choice voting bill, voted to give transmission companies a monopoly, and has never voted no on a spending bill, has the same score as the conservative Janel Brandtjen.
It gives the RINO’s cover. Here’s a quote from an email I received from Kewaunee County chair Kirt Johnson in defense of Joel Kitchens. I bring it up only to demonstrate how these invalid scores are misleading and can be used to trick voters who are looking for conservative action.
‘Brandtjen received a 92 rating from ACU/CPAC in 2023 – the same as Kitchens!! Moreover, her lifetime rating is 88.74 – almost identical to Kitchens!” end quote – Again, the folly of suggesting that Kitchens and Brandtjen are equals on the moderate to conservative scale is ludicrous!
The Intentions Are Good, But the Process is Not
It’s been 40 years since I received my bachelor’s in psychology, but you don’t need much of a refresher course to understand the concepts of reliability and validity. While I would not question the reliability of the scores (the current methods will produce the same result every time), the validity of the scores is nonexistent. The problem is in the method. You can’t just count the votes that go to the floor, you need to assess the bills each legislator cosponsors as well. Which bills do they show up and testify (for or against).
I’ll use this as an example: – You can’t judge someone’s ability to sing by giving them a multiple-choice quiz. You need to actually hear then sing! Legislative leaders understand how the process works. They generally don’t bring controversial bills to the floor for a vote. The bills that would actually help to assess a legislator’s conservative bona fides never make it to the floor. The reason behind the practice of only measuring the votes on bills that reach that floor is to make the process 100% objective.
The problem is that following those guidelines doesn’t produce useful scores.
Unless I’m off in left field somewhere, isn’t the purpose of a score from an advocacy group supposed to inform the public on how certain legislators advocate for that cause? In the case of the NRA cited above, would the NRA really want people to choose the Red Flag Law author over the Constitutional Carry author? Of course not. If these advocacy groups wish to make a difference they will need to do better.
How Does Joel Kitchens and Janel Brandtjen Get the Same Score?
In the case of the American Conservate Union, the problems are greater than just an invalid procedure with “objective” scores on the votes of their selected bills. The bills they select must either be designed to get the same score for all (we wouldn’t want to make any donors unhappy, would we?) or someone isn’t following these bills very close at all.
Brandtjen voted no on ALL the bills that I lay out in my Savagespeaks.Substack.com – Joel Kitchens Needs to be Replaced but yet they get the same score? Why bother putting out a score.
The solution would be to make the conventional “voting” score part of a bigger score that takes into consideration things like bills they’ve authored and cosponsored that didn’t make it to the floor. I can tell you that these types of bills are where the fight is being fought.
A Scorecard is Different Than an Endorsement
Be careful not to assume that just because a “conservative” organization endorses a candidate that the candidate has a voting record that would distinguish them as the conservative choice. Outfits like Americans for Prosperity just endorsed Dan Knodl for Assembly when his voting record was horrendous.
https://acu-ratings-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/ACU_Ratings_WI-2023.pdf
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