Why swallow the exceptions here? This operation shouldn't ever throw an exception unless something is wrong with the script.

You may need to check first if the legislator object already has an "id" field, and if not, first set `m["id"] = {}`, or you may need to make sure `jsondata` has an `external_ids` field, and has any entries. But this should be explicit, rather than getting swallowed in a generic exception handler.