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CalMatters is launching a free tool that helps Californians follow, engage and hold their Sacramento lawmakers accountable in a powerful new way.

Our new tool is a personalized, weekly newsletter called My Legislator, which delivers key updates about your California state assemblymember and senator straight to your email inbox.

We track everything lawmakers say, vote on, and introduce, and more, so that Californians can keep up with their elected leaders, and so elected leaders are accountable to their voters.

Sign up for My Legislator. And if you need help confirming who your state representatives are, don’t worry, our sign-up process has your back.

5,000 Bills to Follow This Session

This session, legislators will consider about 5,000 bills before adjourning in August.

Those bills regulate so much of Californians’ quality of life, as state legislators make decisions on K-12 and college education, courts and prisons, health care, the environment, transportation, housing and homelessness and the cost of living in the world’s fourth largest economy.

The state has an annual budget of more than $300 billion, and it distributes another $200 billion each year from the federal government.

That’s why each week during the legislative session, My Legislator tells you:

• How your legislators cast their votes (or if they missed a vote)
• What they said
• Historical context around who’s funding and influencing them
• The bills they authored as they make their way through the legislative process
• How they’re measuring up to their colleagues on bills passed, missed votes, bipartisanship and more
• Announcements from their offices
• What the numbers mean and how the lawmaking process works

Readers Help Shape Accountability Tool

Last fall, we test drove our My Legislator for one month and beta launched it with just under 3,000 readers. The feedback we received was incredible:

• “The My Legislators newsletter provides useful information that is not available without a deep dive and significant time investment.” -Bill, Petaluma
• “I get emails from both my state and federal representatives. But they only report what they want me to know. The CalMatters My Legislators newsletter succinctly tells me about what bills they write, what they are saying in the media, and especially, how they are voting. This is so helpful.” -Tracey, Oceanside
• “The information about my representatives in the My Legislators newsletter is very revealing. I knew none of it, despite being deeply involved with civic groups for some time. Thank you, CalMatters.” -Susan, Los Angeles
• “I am delighted to get this knowledge about my legislators in the CalMatters Digital Democracy newsletter! I wouldn’t have been aware of any of this information if it weren’t for this service.” -Jeff, Vallejo

Data about what each California state assemblymember and senator is collected in real time through Digital Democracy, a CalMatters project using technology and data to increase transparency, accountability and understanding about California state legislators and the decisions they make about state policy.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

About the Author

Sonya Quick is director of membership for CalMatters.