How the Maine scores work

The vote records

• This term is the 132nd Legislature, whose members took office on December 4, 2024: 1,838 floor roll calls (830 in the House, 1,008 in the Senate), Jan. 8, 2025 to Sept. 30, 2026.
  • First Regular Session: 50 House and 67 Senate roll calls, Jan. 8, 2025 to March 20, 2025.
  • First Special Session: 554 House and 589 Senate roll calls, March 25, 2025 to June 25, 2025.
  • Second Regular Session: 226 House and 297 Senate roll calls, Jan. 13, 2026 to April 29, 2026.
  • First Confirmation Session: 8 Senate roll calls, Nov. 14, 2025.
  • Second Confirmation Session: 47 Senate roll calls, Sept. 30, 2026.
  The two confirmation sessions were the Senate's alone, called to vote on the Governor's nominations between sessions.
• Each roll call is its chamber's official record of it: the House's voting system printout (the number, day, measure, motion, the counts and every seated member's mark) and the Senate's (the paper, question, counts and every senator's mark), both posted on the Legislature's site. Every one must add up to the counts it prints and, in the House, with the vacant seats it prints, fill all 151 seats.
• Each must also agree with its chamber's list of roll calls (number, day and measure) and, for the House, with each representative's own voting record on the House's site: 122,069 votes, every one the same. (The House's records list roll call 341 twice, once as 71 to 68 and once as 72 to 68; the official printout, the Clerk's list and the Legislative Record say 72 to 68.)
• The Legislative Record, the chambers' journal, prints each roll call's lists of names and its tally. Where it's posted, every roll call must match it name for name: 663 House and 220 Senate roll calls were checked this way. The House's Record is posted through March 19, 2026 and the Senate's through May 22, 2025, so 167 House and 788 Senate roll calls are checked against the printout, the list and (in the House) the members' records only.
• Where the Record's lists name exactly the roll call's members but a count it prints differs, the count is a misprint (6: Maine House 32, March 20, 2025; Maine House 144, May 20, 2025; Maine Senate 12, Feb. 11, 2025; Maine Senate 123, April 23, 2025; Maine Senate 143, May 13, 2025; Maine Senate 195, May 21, 2025): the House's Record twice prints the restricted vote below as a vacancy, and four of the Senate's sentences give a count its own lists don't.
• Where the Record's lists and the roll call differ, each was read by hand. Kept as the roll call has it: H.R. 2, June 25, 2025: the Record lists the Speaker as absent, but it also says he asked to be excused from voting on H.R. 2 under House Rule 401.12 and the Chair granted the request; the roll call marks him excused from the vote. The yeas and nays agree name for name. S.P. 100, Jan. 14, 2025: the Record's list of nays leaves out Sen. Brenner, but its own count (19 nays) includes her, as the roll call does. LD 935, May 21, 2025: the Record prints the same lists of names for this roll call and for roll call 201 (Sen. Hickman among the yeas); its own count for this one (17 to 15) is the roll call's, which has Sen. Hickman voting no. LD 635, May 21, 2025: the Record prints the same lists of names for this roll call and for roll call 196 (Sen. Bennett among the nays); its own count for this one (19 to 13) is the roll call's, which has Sen. Bennett voting yes.
• Left out, because the two official records can't both be right: LD 717, April 22, 2025: the roll call has Sen. Grohoski voting yes and Sen. Farrin no; the Legislative Record lists the two the other way around, with the same counts. The two official records can't both be right. LD 588, April 30, 2025: the roll call has Sen. Bennett voting yes and Sen. Bickford no; the Legislative Record lists the two the other way around, with the same counts. The two official records can't both be right.
• Not roll calls: the House's voting system also printed 5 votes it numbered 0, each a division or “total” the House didn't take by roll call (the Record says so for those it covers), so they aren't here. The Senate posts no file for its roll call 238 (LD 60, May 28, 2025; its list's line links a copy of roll call 239), so that roll call can't be shown. Two Senate roll calls have two identical copies posted, two pairs of lines in the Senate's list link each other's files, and 34 lines misprint the year; each roll call's own printout governs.
• Included: 231 Senate roll calls on the Governor's nominations (the question is whether to override the committee's recommendation, so a no vote confirms a nominee the committee recommended) and 24 roll calls on no measure (adjournment, a rule's suspension, an appeal of the chair's ruling). Votes in committee, divisions and voice votes aren't roll calls.
• Contested votes are roll calls where the losing side got at least 10% of the yeas and nays: 794 in the House and 781 in the Senate. Every roll call has its own page. Floor votes lists the contested and party-line ones, and every roll call on request.

Who cast each vote

• The House's printouts name members by surname and initials (“Boyer, M.N.”), the Senate's by surname. Each name goes to the one legislator holding a seat in that chamber that day with that surname (and, where two share one, that first initial), through the House's own list of its members (each tied to its member number) and the Senate's list of senators. Every name on every roll call used matched exactly one legislator, and every member serving was named once.
• The House barred Rep. Laurel Libby (District 90) from voting after it censured her on February 25, 2025: she didn't apologize, and the Speaker ruled she couldn't vote or speak on the floor under House Rule 401, Part 11 (Legislative Record, February 25, 2025). The U.S. Supreme Court ordered her vote restored on May 20, 2025. The House's records mark her vote “restricted” on 142 roll calls; they aren't counted for or against her, and aren't in her share of roll calls she didn't vote on. Each of those vote pages says so.
• Names and terms come from Open States' data on Maine legislators, corrected from the Legislature's own records (5 dates). House District 24 was vacant from the start of the term: Representative-elect Joseph Perry was absent when the House took the oath and was elected State Treasurer that day; Sean Faircloth won the special election and took the seat on March 4, 2025. Kristen Cloutier (District 94) resigned effective October 31, 2025, and Scott Harriman won the special election and took the seat on February 26, 2026. Kathy Javner (District 29) died on January 10, 2026; Nancy Theriault holds the seat now, the day she took office isn't published, and she took it after the last session. Every roll call's count of vacant seats agrees with those dates.
• The House also seats representatives of the Passamaquoddy Tribe (Aaron Dana) and the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians (Brian Reynolds); the Penobscot Nation's seat was empty this term. They may speak with the Speaker's consent and sponsor some legislation but have no vote (Joint Rules 206 and 316), and no roll call names them, so they aren't scored, ranked or on the seat chart, and the House's 151 seats here are its voting seats.
• Two legislators changed parties during the term. Sen. Rick Bennett (District 18), elected as a Republican, announced on June 24, 2025 that he was leaving the Republican Party to run for governor as an independent; Rep. Ed Crockett (District 112), elected as a Democrat, left the Democratic Party in September 2025 for the same reason, between sessions (the House's member page shows him unenrolled; the day, September 15, 2025, is from a party history the House's site no longer shows, and no roll call fell between June 25, 2025 and January 2026). Each vote is compared with the party the member belonged to that day; once unenrolled, they're compared with the party they've sided with more often on party-line votes since. Reps. Sharon Frost and Bill Pluecker were elected as unenrolled members.
• Each build checks our current members against the House's and Senate's lists of 2026-10-23: names, districts and parties.
• Photos are the official portraits on each member's page at the House's and Senate's sites.

Votes with the Speaker or Senate President

• Speaker Ryan Fecteau (District 132) leads the House, and Senate President Mattie Daughtry (District 23) the Senate; the chambers elected them on December 4, 2024. Maine has no Lieutenant Governor, and both leaders vote like any member.
• The score is the share of roll calls on which the member voted the same way, yea or nay, as their chamber's leader. A roll call counts only when both of them voted yea or nay. The Speaker voted on 829 of 830 House roll calls (nay on 128; he was excused from voting on H.R. 2, June 25, 2025, at his request); the President on 979 of 1,008 Senate roll calls (nay on 345).
• The headline number uses contested votes. On unanimous votes nearly everyone agrees with the leader, so the share on all votes, shown alongside, is high for almost everyone.
• A score needs at least 20 votes. The leaders aren't scored against themselves.
• This works like “votes with the President” on the Congress pages, with one difference: the President's position on a bill comes from the White House's public statements, while the leader's position here is the leader's own recorded vote.

Votes with own party

• Counts party-line votes: roll calls where most Democrats voted one way and most Republicans the other (726 in the House, 702 in the Senate). The score is the share of those votes where the member voted with most of their own party. The Congress pages use the same definition.
• Partisan rank orders each chamber's current members by this score, whichever their party: 1 votes with their party most often, and the last votes with it least. Members shown with the same whole percent share a rank, and each legislator's page says how many share it and how many vote with their party more often.
• A score needs at least 20 party-line votes. A member enrolled in no party is scored against the party they vote with more often on party-line votes.
• The table of contested votes on each legislator's page marks every contested vote where they voted against most of their party, whether or not it was a party-line vote, so it can list more votes than the score counts.

Didn't vote at roll call

• The share of roll calls, while the member was in office, on which they didn't vote yea or nay. The House's records say whether a member was excused (for the day or for the vote) or didn't vote; the Senate's whether a senator was excused or absent. Each vote page lists them apart.
• “In office” means the member held a seat that day: each printout lists every seated member, whether or not they voted. Rep. Libby's restricted votes aren't counted (see above).

The seat chart

• Each chamber's current members are seats, ordered from most liberal (left) to most conservative (right). There's no DW-NOMINATE score for state legislators, so the order comes from the Legislature's own contested votes: for every pair of members, the share of contested roll calls on which they voted the same way, scaled to one left-right dimension (Poole's agreement-score method, the usual first step of roll-call scaling). Republicans are on the right. A member with fewer than 20 contested votes sits at their party's middle.
• Color uses the same rule as the Congress pages: how often a member crosses party lines toward the middle on party-line votes, siding with the other party alongside their own party's more moderate members. Solid blue or red means almost never; purple means at least 1 in 10 of those votes.
• Maine legislators cross party lines on party-line votes about as often as members of Congress: one in ten does so on at least 8.2% of them, against 7.4% in Congress, and the median legislator on 3.0%, against 1.7%. So the Maine pages use Congress's own color steps: purple from 10%, then 7.5, 5, 3 and 1.5%. Purple: 13 of the 185 current members scored.
• Gray seats: no party-line score. The tribal representatives have no seat on the chart (see above).

Bills passed

• Every Legislative Document (LD) of the term, from the Legislature's bill directory: 1,440 introduced in the House and 802 in the Senate, bills, resolves and constitutional resolutions alike. Joint orders, joint resolutions and the chambers' own papers aren't LDs and aren't counted.
• An LD counts for its sponsor, the member the printed LD says presented it. Cosponsors aren't counted, and an LD a committee reported, or an agency's resolve for the review of a rule (which the Clerk or the Secretary receives without a sponsor), counts for no one (93).
• Passed both chambers: 619 House and 360 Senate LDs, by each one's final disposition on its bill page. 971 became law, signed or without the Governor's signature (173); each has a chapter in the session laws (public laws, private and special laws, resolves). 8 were vetoed, and every veto stood: the House voted to override the one on LD 1228 and the Senate didn't. No constitutional resolution passed both chambers. The 3 LDs a tribal representative presented count for no one.
• Ranks are among current members of the chamber, and among current members of the chamber in the same party: 1 has the most, and members with the same number share a rank. Members who took office during the term had less time to pass bills.

Budget projects

• Maine's budget bills don't say which legislator asked for an item, so there's no budget figure for Maine legislators.

The November 3 ballot

• All 151 House seats and all 35 Senate seats are up: Maine's representatives and senators both serve two years. The members elected take office when the 133rd Legislature convenes on December 2, 2026.
• House candidates (276) are as the House Clerk's candidate list showed them on Oct. 23, 2026, with the party it gives each one (19 independent, unenrolled or other). The Clerk calls the list unofficial until it's checked against the Secretary of State's, and one candidate's label, “No Labels”, is a party Maine withdrew in 2025; it's shown as the Clerk prints it. Checked against the official June 9, 2026 House primary results: 247 of the 266 party nominees are on the Clerk's list; in 9 districts the list has another candidate of that party, and in 10 none, as when a nominee withdraws after the primary.
• Senate candidates (60) are each party's nominee in the official June 9, 2026 primary results (the Secretary of State posted no general-election candidate list; the results were saved through a browser, since maine.gov refuses scripts). Unenrolled and minor-party Senate candidates who qualified by petition, and any nominee replaced since, aren't listed. Only names, parties and districts are kept from either list.
• The address lookup and the district map use the districts the Legislature enacted in 2021, the ones the members elected in 2022 and 2024 represent.

Recent key votes

Each legislator's page lists their five most recent key votes, and its voting record opens with their key votes (the newest 300) until the whole record loads. A key vote is a contested or party-line roll call (both as defined above) that gave the chamber's last word on a whole bill, budgets included: its passage, agreeing to the other chamber's changes, adopting a conference committee's report or accepting the Governor's amendments, or a vote to override a veto. We read that from the motion as the record names it. Amendments, procedural motions and the adoption of resolutions aren't key votes, and neither is a motion we haven't listed. This term, 85 of the Maine House's 830 roll calls and 106 of the Maine Senate's 1,008 are key votes.

Next to each key vote is the bill's plain-language explanation where one has been checked against the official text (below); where there isn't one yet, the page says so rather than describe the bill another way.

Bill explanations

Maine vote pages don't carry an explanation of the bill yet. Each page's title is the bill's title as the Legislature's bill directory lists it, and the page links to the bill's page there, where its text, amendments and status are.

Data sources and downloads

Everything these pages show can be downloaded, free to reuse. Percent columns ending in “_shown” are the whole numbers the pages show; the counts behind each one are beside it. Terms of reuse

• members.csv: Every Maine legislator this term with each score, the counts behind it and the whole percent the pages show.
• votes.csv: Every Maine floor roll call with its totals, whether it was contested or party-line, how the leader and each party's majority voted, and the official record.
• member-votes.csv: How every Maine legislator voted on every floor roll call.
• bills.csv: Every Maine bill this term with its sponsors, its kind (statewide, local or claim) and how far it got.

Checks

• PASS: Maine House: current members match the chamber's own list — 151 members and 0 vacant seats agree
• PASS: Maine Senate: current members match the chamber's own list — 35 members and 0 vacant seats agree
• PASS: Maine: every bill's sponsors are legislators on these pages, and their counts add up — 2,149 sponsor credits on 2,149 bills
• PASS: Maine: every LD's sponsor tied to one legislator or a committee; every LD that passed both chambers law, vetoed or sent to the voters — all of them
• PASS: Maine: the vote-by-vote download's files match the state's settings — member-votes.csv
• PASS: Maine: the address lookup's file lists every seat's holder — 186 seats
• PASS: Maine: every vote on the records credited to the right legislator — all matched
• PASS: Maine: bill explanations are approved and match their official source — 0 vote pages show one
• PASS: Maine: every vote page's bill has its title — 1838 votes
• PASS: Maine: every current legislator has an official portrait — 188 portraits
• PASS: Maine: the current term hasn't ended — through 2026-12-01
• PASS: Maine: the district map has every seat, and only those — 151 House districts, 35 Senate districts
• PASS: Maine: every incumbent on the ballot links to their voting record — all linked
• PASS: Maine: every official roll call adds up to its printed counts and names every member serving that day once, each tied to the one member holding a seat; it agrees with its chamber's list, the House's with each representative's own voting record, and both with the Legislative Record where posted — 1,838 roll calls (House 830, Senate 1,008)
• PASS: Maine: Nov. 3 legislative candidates cover every seat on the ballot — 186 races