As was the case in prior years, 

Beyond the 16 bills (66%) that the Speaker blocked from a floor vote,  the remaining 8 bills had overwhelming majority support, whether for or against the Common Cause position. This reflects the unfortunate "group think" that dominates both chambers of the General Assembly. Our conversations with current and former legislators, and a review of hundreds of votes made clear that often legislators do not review the bills they vote on, and their vote serves as nothing more than an extension of the chamber's leadership. A review of random bills from 2019 that were summarily dismissed "unanimously" by committees provides convincing evidence of this practice: from auditing of election results and expanding early voting to increasing the openness and accessibility of government meetings - no legislative body with an 88% Democratic super-majority would ever vote these bills down unanimously. In fact, these bills are often the hallmark of even more moderate Democrats, let alone progressives. When so many genuinely good pro-democracy and ethics bills are killed off by a "unanimous" committee vote, it is fair to question if lawmakers have an understanding of what they are voting on. Based on our detailed analysis of the votes for these bills, the RI House of Representatives with its 66-9 Democratic advantage appears to have ceded much of its power to one of its most conservative members.

Our rankings are the first "scorecard" to include committee votes. Committee votes play a huge part in Democracy, because a bill voted down in committee usually never sees the light of day for a floor vote. Many good bills die in committee, both on the local and national level and much more attention should be paid to this step in the lawmaking process. In committee, a small group of legislators votes on behalf of the entire House and determines whether a bill is worthy of a full floor vote. With respect to these rankings, committees defeated 14 of 18 bills that were supported by Common Cause using the "Held for Further Study" gimmick. In the House, the gimmick works like this: Rather than going on the record as opposing a good bill or supporting an unpopular bill, voting to hold a bill for further study allows the committee to kill a bill by voting to shelve it. While some bills held are actually "studied" and re-introduced for a second vote later on in the session, the vast majority of bills come to an end using this maneuver. Generally, General Assembly committee votes suffer from "group think" or voting on direction from leadership because lawmakers are not familiar enough with the bills they are tasked with voting on. As a result, members vote as leadership instructs them or side with the voice majority. Our rankings treat a vote for further study as a "no" vote if the bill never comes up again in that year's session. As a result, voters have a much clearer picture of how damaging committees can be to progress.