If you are a regular (or even occasional) visitor to the California League of Conservation Voters website, you probably noticed just now that something was… different. (You know, like when someone you know gets a new pair of glasses.)
Though our new website has many aesthetic improvements and is easier to navigate, this overhaul was far more than a superficial redesign. CLCV is proud to launch what is likely the most comprehensive online source of information about California environmental politics, along with a powerful set of tools for citizen activism.
For the last four decades, CLCV has been helping elect environmental champions and keeping them accountable, and connecting conservation-minded voters with their representatives. This new website greatly expands our capacity to do both.
The California Environmental Scorecard is our main accountability tool. Since 1973, each year we have tracked the environmental and anti-environmental actions of state legislators and the governor. Now that data is far more accessible and easy to understand than ever before.
You can search or browse for the state’s elected officials and get a detailed profile of their votes on each year’s top environmental legislation since 2005. (Data from prior years remain available in PDF format). The results of each bill are shown so you can see how your legislator’s record compares to the record of the legislature as a whole. Bill pages feature every legislator’s vote, a description of the bill and what happened to it, and a link to more information from the legislature. Bills are now categorized under major issues, and issue pages link to the newest relevant pages on the site that relate to that topic — including our analytical, informative, and sometimes irreverent blog posts. (We aim to please.)
This new online format will help you keep tabs on your representatives and let them know what you think of their votes. We now have a greatly expanded set of tools to help you contact your legislators or the governor directly from our website (though you should still call and write letters). Now that we’ve built this site, we will be expanding our efforts to reach out to Californians who want to protect our great state and the health of the people in it.
What allows us to beat the big rich polluters is the collective power of the grassroots, and that’s what we hope to tap into more effectively with these new (to us) technologies. As we always say, we can’t do it without you — your support helps us win.
Change is good. Keep checking back for more improvements, and let us know what you think.
