Every year Peace Action West rates the votes of every member of Congress on the year’s most critical foreign policy legislation. From measures to end the war in Iraq to efforts in effectively halting the production of new nuclear weapons and their proliferation, we take a look at how our representatives voted and assign them a score based on such performance. Because our government’s actions have an impact in every corner of the globe, we need an engaged and informed public to hold our elected officials accountable. As such this scorecard becomes a tool to inform you – and to help you take action.

Far too often narrow political calculations guide representatives when they vote on life and death foreign policy issues. Countless votes are based on an instinctive political fear of appearing “soft on defense”. Many members of Congress also believe that their constituents simply don’t care about international relations. But poll after poll shows that Americans do care deeply about international relations and their views are as principled as they are pragmatic.

Read this scorecard and find out how your representative performs on the most important issues of our foreign policy agenda, so that you can let them know what you think, hold them accountable on future votes but most importantly to close the gap between what you want on what they think you want.

View the 2006 Congressional Scorecard
Low Resolution (600k)
High Resolution (3mg)