Arkansas Legislature
What do they do that
matters to my everyday life?
The legislature meets in full session for several months every other year.
In 2021, a full-session year, they passed
more than 1,100 laws.
Legislators decide where your tax dollars go.
They distribute tax revenue to our state agencies for tourism, education, the environment, and more.
Many laws have direct impacts, large and small, on our everyday lives, affecting some people more than others.
For example, this year, the legislature passed laws that:
Major legislation this session included:
There was no significant legislation passed in 2021 in these critical areas:
The issues that Arkansans say matter are:
What our state legislators think about the
role of government in people’s lives,
the needs of our state, &
who they serve,
will be reflected in how they vote
and which issues they
choose to ignore.
An important part of the Indivisible mission is to educate voters about how their lawmakers represented them and their interests.
Voter education enables us to support lawmakers who care about what matters.
Who are my state lawmakers?
To find out your representatives in the Arkansas Senate and House of Representatives, go to the websites https://senate.arkansas.gov and https://www.arkansashouse.org/learn/district-map.
Enter your address information in the search box on each site.
How do I find out what my state lawmakers stand for and how they vote?
To learn about your representatives, here are a few tips from Indivisible National that can be applied to state politics:
▬ Find your state legislators, their official websites, and their office contact info.
▬ Review your lawmakers’ voting history.
Go to the current legislative session to read up on all the bills that passed and how each legislator voted.
▬ Research your reps’ biggest campaign contributors.
▬ Sign up on your legislators’ websites and social media platforms to receive updates and invitations to local events and to understand their viewpoints and policy positions.
Every legislator has an e-newsletter.
▬ Set up a Google News Alert — for example for “Rep. Bob Smith” — to receive an email whenever your legislators are in the news.
▬ Research on Google News which local reporters have written about your legislators. Find and follow those reporters on Twitter.
Here are some basic questions to ask yourself when learning about your state’s legislative process.
■ Which dates is my state legislature in session?
■ Does my state legislature have specific deadlines to meet as legislation moves through the process?
■ Who is part of the state legislative leadership?
Helpful links
■ Legislative process: Resources - Arkansas House of Representatives