2023 Legislative Scorecard

South Carolina is embarking on a path toward a brighter future – and adopting key free-market policies will be key to this journey. The South Carolina Policy Council’s 2023-24 Legislative Scorecard was created to assist in this effort and promote the organization’s principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty and responsibility.

This report, which covers the first year of the 2023-24 regular legislative session, scores lawmakers’ votes on key bills that relate to our legislative agenda, and covers the following policy initiatives: school choice, reduced taxes and spending, government transparency, deregulation, and limiting the impacts of ESG (environmental, social and governance) policies on public funds.

We created the scorecard to serve two important goals: 1) Empower citizens with the tools and information to hold their representatives accountable on key issues; and 2) Recognize the General Assembly’s most committed free-market champions. We believe that a scorecard is the best tool for the job.

Members were each scored on nine votes, though the scorecard covers 12 total bills. This difference can be attributed to the fact that several bills passed only one legislative chamber (three passed only the House, and three passed only the Senate).

This report is the first release of a two-part series for the 2023-24 regular legislative session. An additional scorecard will be published next year covering all scored votes taken on selected bills for the entire session, including those noted here, for a final member rating.

View the scorecard HERE.