NEW COMMON GROUND SCORECARD RATES HAWAII POLITICIANS’ COMMITMENT TO SEEK AGREEMENT ON ISSUES THAT MATTER TO VOTERS 

Newly released voter assistance tool scores HI politicians’ success at working across the aisle

News Release from Common Ground Committee

Wilton, CT, September 16, 2020 – Following the Democratic and Republican conventions, Common Ground Committee, Inc (CGC), a nonpartisan, citizen-led organization devoted to improving public discourse in politics, has launched its newest initiative: the Common Ground Scorecard. The scorecard is the first-ever model to assess the degree to which elected public officials and candidates for office seek points of agreement on social and political issues through listening and productive conversation, scoring politicians up to a maximum of 110 points, using aggregated data from the Lugar Index, VoteSmart, the Bipartisan Policy Center and other data sources. Additional points can be earned via commitments to finding common ground going forward, or deducted for personal insults.

Voters will head to the polls this November amidst unprecedented challenges. This new landscape necessitates a tool to help Americans see which candidates are most committed to working across the aisle to solve these issues. Using the Common Ground Scorecard, voters can search for public officials by name, state, or office held. They can also search using their own zip code to get a list of the officials that will appear on their ballots. They can see how those representatives have performed on finding common ground and making bipartisan progress.

“As we head towards a critical election cycle, it’s become increasingly clear that partisanship is getting in the way of solutions to the very real issues facing our nation,” said Bruce Bond, co-founder and CEO of Common Ground Committee. “Our hope is that the Scorecard will be a tool Americans will use to help them choose who they will vote for in the 2020 election.”

Hawaii Governor David Ige scored 0/110.

Hawaii senators scored as follows:

• Brian Schatz, 20/110
• Mazie Hirono, 20/110

Hawaii House Representatives scored as follows:

• Ed Case, 24/110
• Tulsi Gabbard, 37/110

This video provides a short walkthrough of the scorecard and how to use it, and summary statistics can be found here.

Common Ground Committee does not endorse political candidates. The organization’s only goal in providing the Common Ground Scorecard is to provide voters with an objective, up-to-date and easy-to-understand tool to discover how likely their elected officials or candidates for public office are to work with the opposite party to find common ground. It does not assess other criteria which voters may also want to consider.

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About Common Ground Committee

Common Ground Committee (CGC) (commongroundcommittee.org) is a nonpartisan, citizen-led organization that inspires action on polarizing issues by bringing prominent leaders with opposing views together in public forums to find common ground. Since its founding in 2009, CGC has held 11 forums featuring panelists who have reached over 200 points of consensus. Panelist pairs have included such notables as David Petraeus and Susan Rice, John Kerry and Condoleezza Rice, Michael Steele and Donna Brazile, and Larry Kudlow and Barney Frank, exploring issues ranging from race and income inequality to foreign policy. Free of political agenda and financial influence, CGC has a singular focus on bringing light, not heat, to public discourse.