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Sen. Rick Scott

Senator for Florida

pronounced rik // skot


Scott is the junior senator from Florida and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 8, 2019. Scott is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 70 years old.

Elections must be decided by counting votes

Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his senior government advisors, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided instead by incumbent politicians running in the very same election. Their attempts to suppress entire state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and using a disinformation campaign of lies and conspiracy theories was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.


Scott was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Scott voted to reject the state-certified election results of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania (states narrowly won by Democrats), which could have changed the outcome of the election. These legislators pumped the lies and preposterous legal arguments about the election that motivated the January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol. The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors.
Photo of Sen. Rick Scott [R-FL]

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2022 Report Card for Scott.

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Scott is shown as a purple triangle in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the Senate 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 Scott has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Mar 30, 2023. See full analysis methodology.

Committee Membership

Rick Scott sits on the following committees:

Enacted Legislation

Scott was the primary sponsor of 3 bills that were enacted:

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Does 3 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 110th Congress).

Bills Sponsored

Issue Areas

Scott sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

International Affairs (26%) Government Operations and Politics (20%) Health (11%) Crime and Law Enforcement (10%) Taxation (8%) Education (8%) Economics and Public Finance (8%) Immigration (8%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Scott recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Key Votes

Scott voted Nay

Resolution Agreed to 89/11 on Feb 9, 2021.

This was a Senate Resolution on procedures for the trial of the former President. It needed only a simple majority to pass, but received 87 …

Scott voted Nay

Bill Passed 69/27 on Jan 21, 2021.

This was a vote to waive the seven-year waiting period for former military to serve in the civilian position of Defense Secretary. Nominee Lloyd Austin …

Scott voted Yea

Veto Overridden 81/13 on Jan 1, 2021.

This was the Senate's vote to override President Trump's veto of H.R. 6395, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, which is the …

Scott voted Nay

Bill Passed 91/2 on Dec 10, 2019.

Many hands make light work. At 335 pages, March’s $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act only came together so quickly by …

Scott voted Yea

Conference Report Agreed to 83/16 on Feb 14, 2019.

This bill, in its final form, funded the parts of the federal government whose funding was to lapse on February 15, 2019. On December 22, …

Missed Votes

From Jan 2019 to Mar 2023, Scott missed 45 of 1,745 roll call votes, which is 2.6%. This is on par with the median of 2.3% among the lifetime records of senators currently serving. 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.

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Primary Sources

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