How AZVLC Scores Arizona Politicians

1 The Blended Score

Each politician's final score is a weighted average of two components:

Community ratings are capped at 30% of the score, and that weight has to be earned. A grade built on a single person's rating should not carry the same authority as one built on a broad set of them, so a politician's community weight grows as more Veterans rate them, up to that 30% maximum. Whatever weight the community has not yet earned stays with the voting record, which comes from official roll calls and does not depend on how many people happened to submit a rating.

Each Veteran gets one rating per politician. You can revise your rating at any time — if you got new information or the politician earned a different grade — and your new grade replaces your old one rather than counting twice.

If a politician has a voting record but no community ratings, the full score comes from their voting record. If they have community ratings but no tracked votes, the score is based entirely on community input. The grade letter is derived from that final blended number.

2 Voting Record Score (70% or more)

AZVLC tracks specific Veteran-focused bills that reached a floor vote in the Arizona Legislature. For each bill, we designate which vote direction is Pro-Veteran (usually Yea, but occasionally Nay on a bill that restricts Veterans' benefits).

The voting score formula is:

Key rules:

• Yea on a Pro-Veteran bill counts as a Pro-Veteran vote and helps the score.
• Nay on a Pro-Veteran bill counts as an Anti-Veteran vote and subtracts from the score. A deliberate No carries a real penalty.
• Absent or not voting counts in the denominator but neither helps nor hurts directly. Missing votes does dilute the score because the politician had fewer opportunities to earn Pro-Veteran credit.
• The score cannot go below zero.

Only bills with a recorded roll call vote in LegiScan are included. Bills that passed by voice vote or never reached the floor do not appear in the voting record.

3 Community Rating Score (up to 30%)

Veterans and their families can rate politicians directly on the site using a letter grade (A through F). These ratings reflect lived experience and community trust, which floor votes alone cannot capture.

Community ratings are converted to a 0-100 scale: A = 100, B = 75, C = 50, D = 25, F = 0. The score is the weighted average of all submitted ratings for that politician.

4 Grade Scale

5 Data Sources

Voting records are pulled from LegiScan, which aggregates official Arizona Legislature roll call data. Community ratings are submitted directly by site visitors and stored in our database. Scores sync automatically each week and can be updated manually by AZVLC administrators.

AZVLC is a 501(c)(4) organization. This tracker is provided as a public resource for the Veteran community. We strive for accuracy but encourage you to verify individual votes through the Arizona Legislature's official site.