Last weekend, I opened up the hood of Idaho Insider to add more features that I hope will be useful to you. Earlier this year, with the help of AI tools, I constructed a system in which the data that appears on a legislator’s profile page—committee assignments, links to websites and contact info, legislative scorecards—is generated dynamically based on a back-end database.
I figured that since the data was already there, I might be able to do some fun things with it. I returned to my AI assistants and created a new page, Scorecard Explorer, that shows you the breakdown of eight different scorecards across the past two years:
It’s a simple and fast page that lets you not only select a scorecard, a year, a chamber, and a party, but you can sort the resulting list by score, party, chamber, district, and name.
Right now, most of the scorecards I’ve added are from the conservative perspective, but I’d be open to adding more from all sides. Even a left-leaning scorecard can provide useful data from right-leaning voters—if your legislator scores high on a rating published by Planned Parenthood or the ACLU then it’s time to start asking questions.
I won’t be including low-quality scorecards, such as those that only score two or three bills, or those that use AI to generate scores.
Having seen how Scorecard Explorer could dynamically display info, including photo thumbnails, I decided to rework the main Legislative Branch page as well. Originally, I created tables for House and Senate members and manually inserted links all 105 legislator profile. Now, both tables are entirely dynamically generated based on my back-end database, meaning it will be very easy to update as the Legislature evolves over the next year.
Desktop users get to see thumbnails, while mobile users just see names, since otherwise it would be far too crowded.
If you can
The more I’m able to automate, the less work Idaho Insider requires going forward. I’m still just one man, so the less time I need to spend on the website, the more time I can dedicate to writing. I’ve heard from numerous people in various roles who find Idaho Insider to be very useful to their work. That’s exactly why I created it—to give you as much information as possible in as useful a form as possible, to help you be as engaged in the political process as possible.
If you find these resources useful, I invite you to support the Gem State Chronicle via a paid Substack subscription. If you have a business or organization you’d like to promote, reach out to me—I’d love to partner with you.
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Thank you to all who have faithfully supported my work over the years. This began as a simple newsletter nearly four years ago, and it expanded into the full platform in late 2023. I believe we’ll look back in another two years and realize that this was the beginning of something big. Thanks for being here on the ground floor!
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About Brian Almon
Brian Almon is the Editor of the Gem State Chronicle. He also serves as Chairman of the District 14 Republican Party and is a trustee of the Eagle Public Library Board. He lives with his wife and five children in Eagle.
