EcoLinking#12
by Don Rittner

Environmental Legislators - Keeping Tabs on the Good and Bad!

Trying to keep tabs on how individual members of Congress vote on the
environment is no easy matter.  Fortunately, there is an organization that
does it for us - The League of Conservation Voters

LCV is the national, 50,000 member strong, non-partisan political arm of the
environmental community.  For 22 years, they have worked in the national
political arena to support and elect candidates to Congress who will vote to
protect the nation's environment -- they hold them accountable by publishing
the National Environmental Scorecard every year.  They are now using
cyberspace to distribute this information to an even larger audience.

LCV has the largest environmental PAC that funds environmentalists running
for Congress.  They keep the score on all the members of Congress by tracking
their votes on environment issues.  To choose the votes, they consult with
leading members of 27 environmental groups who volunteer their time to advise
LCV on policy matters.  Polls are run through their Environmental Opinion
Study affiliate. 

They educate voters every way they can.  LCV's record? In the 1992 election
cycle, 108 of their 169 endorsed candidates won election to Congress, many of
them new members.

Peter L. Kelley, communciations Director for just six months already is
gearing up the League to use cyberspace to further their goals.  Here are
some of the things he has done:

-- Disseminated the text of their Presidential Scorecard, which was brought
out in January and is now circulating around on the nets.  This is a voter
education project, as well as a tool for environmental lobbyists (Clinton got
a C+ scorecard for 1993). Both a full electronic text of the 30-page booklet,
and a smaller version with just the opening pages have been uploaded and
circulated.  Peter also put it on BitNet's bitl.clinton and bitl.politics
discussion lists and UseNet's alt.politics and alt.politics.clinton
newsgroups.  He also sent it around on EcoNet and over the Internet to
friends and key contacts so you will find it on upcoming editions of The
Greendisk, Rachel's Hazardous Waste Newsletter, and in the library of the
Society of Environmental Journalists Online Forum. 

--You can now search the congressional scorecard, the National Environmental
Scorecard, in the Network Earth Forum on America Online (and soon to be in
the AOL Environmental Forum).  A text file and database is also being
developed for EcoNet.  A new edition will be uploaded at the end of February.

Peter sees this as "a very exciting development and should eventually help us
reach more voters; either because they'll see their members' scores directly,
or because influential people in politics, the media, and community life in
general will get the info and use it." 

LCV's  political staff members are also using the modem to download the votes
and bill descriptions they need using the Legislate service, and each day
they download the Hotline and Greenwire news feeds.

Future projects include turning one of their computers into a communications
server accessible over the network. 

If you are interested in contacting them and getting a copy of their summary
or full document:

Email to:
Internet: lcv@econet.apc.org
America Online:  LCVoters
Compuserve:  73641,366

or League of Conservation Voters
1707 L Street, NW
Suite 550
Washington, DC 20036 

or call 202-785-VOTE.