California legislative tracking, modernized.

A better way to work the California Capitol.

Every California session brings the same stress — last-minute vote counts, complex bill language, endless position letters. With Real Time Gov (RTG), advocacy teams in and around Sacramento finally have a modern alternative to legacy tracking systems like CapitolTrack.

What is California legislative tracking?

Legislative tracking is the work of following bills through the California Legislature closely enough to act on them: what was introduced, what was amended, who voted which way, and what is on next week's hearing calendar. Traditional approaches rely on delayed updates or manual monitoring, with staffers refreshing the Legislative Information website, reading committee analyses by hand, and waiting for an end-of-day digest.

Real-time tracking closes that gap: you know when a vote happens, when an amendment lands, and when a position shifts, the same day rather than the next morning. Where it goes beyond status and starts telling you what the change means, it becomes legislative intelligence.

Why traditional tools fall behind.

In a session that moves 4,000-plus bills across 1,000-plus committee hearings, a delay is a missed chance to influence the outcome. The usual failure points:

• Vote alerts arrive after the decision is already made
• Bill summaries need manual interpretation before anyone can act
• Hearing schedules are scattered across committee pages
• Coalition positions live in a spreadsheet someone else owns
• Position letters are drafted from scratch, every time

The legacy California tracking tools built this category. Today's pace asks for live data, a modern interface, and intelligence that gets out of the way of the work.

How to track California bills in real time.

The approach that holds up in session is to combine live monitoring with tools that help your team interpret and act on what just happened, without checking four sites through the day:

• Follow status changes as they happen across both chambers
• Take floor-vote alerts with preliminary and final tallies, plus the changes members make after the roll closes
• Get notified the moment a tracked bill goes on call, while the vote is still in motion
• Read AI-assisted summaries to understand a bill and its amendments faster
• Keep one dashboard showing where every tracked bill sits in the process
• Draft support or oppose letters in seconds, approved line by line
• Build coalition whip counts across separate organizations, in one shared view
• Search the full CalAccess lobbyist directory, cross-referenced and refreshed daily

Draft letters in seconds.

Stop scrambling when staff asks “where's your letter?” With RTG's AI drafting tools, you plug in client feedback and generate a professional position letter in seconds — ready to edit and send. More time to advocate, less time wrestling with generic templates.

What you get on day one.

• Rich dashboard with intuitive visuals showing exactly where each bill sits in the process
• Real-time floor-vote alerts and SMS notifications with preliminary and final tallies
• Catches the quiet vote switches that show up the next day — you're never caught off guard
• AI-assisted bill summaries that clarify titles and language for any audience
• Tracked hearing schedules, shareable with clients in one click
• Cross-account coalition whip counts — your team plus partner orgs, one shared view
• Full CalAccess lobbyist directory, cross-referenced and refreshed daily
• The Pulse mobile companion — Capitol Directory and live vote alerts in your pocket

One platform. All in.

Many RTG customers come from traditional California tracking platforms looking for a faster, more flexible way to manage California legislation. Today's policy environment demands real-time intelligence, intuitive reporting, and AI-assisted advocacy support — in one place, not stitched across three tools.

RTG is fully scalable: a single source for AI-assisted legislative intelligence, live floor-vote alerts (including post-vote changes), and a dashboard that visualizes every bill's current location. See the 14-day moving-in plan →

Who works this way.

Contract lobby shops tracking client portfolios across many bills and many sessions. Trade associations coordinating positions across hundreds of member organizations. Unions, nonprofit advocacy groups, corporate government affairs teams, and the lawyers and consultants advising them on exposure. The same product, set up five different ways: see how each shape uses it.

Comparing tools rather than approaches? The buyer's guide to legislative tracking software covers what to look for, and RTG vs CapitolTrack goes cell by cell.