Rep. John R. Lewis

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2019 Report Card for Lewis.

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Lewis is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 2020 positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).

The chart is based on the bills Lewis sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 6, 2015 to Dec 28, 2020. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Lewis was the primary sponsor of 22 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• H.R. 5517 (116th): Gandhi-King Scholarly Exchange Initiative Act
• H.R. 3151 (116th): Taxpayer First Act
• H.R. 267 (115th): Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park Act of 2017
• H.R. 5067 (114th): Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Reauthorization Act of 2016
• H.R. 4488 (113th): Gold Medal Technical Corrections Act of 2014
• H.R. 3899 (112th): To provide for rollover treatment to traditional IRAs of amounts received in airline carrier bankruptcy.
• H.R. 4994 (111th): Medicare and Medicaid Extenders Act of 2010

View All »

Does 22 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.

We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110^th Congress).

Bills Sponsored

Issue Areas

Lewis sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Taxation (27%) Health (17%) Crime and Law Enforcement (12%) Education (11%) International Affairs (10%) Social Welfare (7%) Families (7%) Transportation and Public Works (7%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Lewis recently introduced the following legislation:

• H.R. 7644 (116th): Juvenile Incarceration Reduction Act of 2020
• H.R. 7591 (116th): Fostering Healthy Transitions into Adulthood Act of 2020
• H.R. 7543 (116th): HELP Act of 2020
• H.R. 7544 (116th): Missed Opportunities in Public Health and Biomedical Research Act of 2020
• H.R. 7546 (116th): Minority Community Public Health Emergency Response Act of 2020
• H.R. 7545 (116th): Transportation and Infrastructure Profession Opportunity Grants Act
• H.R. 6055 (116th): Community Reentry Act of 2020

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Key Votes

Missed Votes

From Jan 1987 to Jul 2020, Lewis missed 1,491 of 20,777 roll call votes, which is 7.2%. This is much worse than the median of 2.3% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Jul 2020. The chart below reports missed votes over time.

We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.

Show the numbers...

Primary Sources

The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:

• unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
• The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
• United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990 by Howard L. Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole.
• Martis’s “The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress”, via Keith Poole’s roll call votes data set, for political party affiliation for Members of Congress from 1789 through about year 2000
• GPO Member Guide for the photo
• GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills