Sierra Club Scorecard identifies the “Top Dozen” and the “Dirty Dozen”
For Earth Day 2026, the West Virginia Chapter of Sierra Club released its final Voter Scorecard for the 2025-2026 session of the WV Legislature.
Twelve West Virginia state legislators voted to protect the environment at least 75 % of the time and were designated as the Top Dozen Heroes. Four others earned an Honorable Mention. But four voted against environmental protection every single time, earning a “Zero” score. And nine others voted in favor of the environment less than 15 % of the time, to make up the Dirty Bakers Dozen.
“Local voters should be pleased when their legislators are among the Clean Sixteen” said Jim Kotcon, with the WV Chapter Political Committee. “We need to thank these leaders every time we take a drink of clean water, breathe clean air, or pay lower electricity prices due to a phase-out of dirty energy and an increase in the availability of solar power. But it is disappointing that, out of the many opportunities in this session, four State legislators could not bring themself to vote to protect the environment even once over the last two years.”
“We need to look at the voting records of our political leaders to really determine who has been working to weaken air and water standards and hamstring enforcement efforts,” said Kotcon. “Unfortunately, legislators are good at hiding their real attitude by keeping contentious votes out of the public eye. That is why it is so important to evaluate their actual voting records”.
The Sierra Club’s 2025-2026 Legislative Scorecard includes votes on key environmental bills by all Delegates and Senators for the 2025 and 2026 legislative sessions. Bills were chosen based on roll call votes where a clear pro-environment position was identified, and where at least 5% of the chamber voted in opposition (votes where 100% agree do not help distinguish pro-environment attitudes). Those votes were used to calculate a pro-environment percentage score, with 100% being perfect.
The Legislative Scorecard is available at: https://www.sierraclub.org/west-virginia/politics.
