Motherhood, apple pie, recorded votes
Movement to record legislators' votes gathers backers, but details on how to do it remain knotty
09:12 PM CST on Saturday, December 4, 2004
By KELLEY SHANNON / Associated Press
In Texas, major legislation affecting what happens in your back yard could pass, and you wouldn't know how your representative voted. The Dallas Morning News and four other newspapers have teamed up with The Associated Press to explore the issue.
HARRY CABLUCK/AP
Rep. Joe Nixon, R-Houston, signals his 'aye' vote during the 2003 legislative session. In the background, the vote tally board keeps track of House members' votes. Meanwhile on Friday, a big name in Texas politics joined the movement: Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst called for recording state Senate votes on the second and final passage of bills, part of an effort to give citizens "a front seat to the legislative process," according to Mr. Dewhurst.How your Texas legislator voted on requiring children to say the Pledge of Allegiance and observe a minute of silence at school is in the state record.
But if you're checking how a state House member voted on parts of a homeowner insurance bill – or how a senator stood in banning off-road vehicles in river beds – it gets trickier.
Perhaps impossible.
In Texas, the Legislature generally is not required to record how each lawmaker voted on a bill in the full House or Senate. Individual votes are recorded if representatives and senators decide to do so. Dozens of civic, public interest and political groups are pushing to require lawmakers to record individual votes at certain stages in the Legislature.
"It seems to us so basic to good government," said Linda Camin of Dallas, chair of the Sunshine Committee on Recorded Votes for the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Texas. "Your constituents should know how you vote."
Texas is one of 10 states that don't require a recorded, or roll-call, vote on final passage of every bill in either legislative chamber, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and research by The Associated Press.
Texas lawmakers might hold a "voice vote," meaning they shout out yes or no on a bill, without any record of how each person voted. In a "division vote," there's a brief show of how the majority stands – House members, for example, push their electronic voting buttons – but there is no final record of individual votes.
A Texas Poll conducted this fall by the Scripps Research Center found that 88 percent of the 1,000 people polled agreed legislators should be required to record their votes. Eighty percent supported a constitutional amendment requiring such voting.
Among the organizations supporting a recorded vote requirement are AARP; the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas; the Greater Dallas Association of Realtors; Campaigns for People; the state Democratic and Republican parties; the Texas Daily Newspaper Association; and the Texas Association of Broadcasters.
On Friday, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst advocated recorded Senate votes for second readings and final passage of bills, with results posted on the Web.
Some Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature have filed bills for the 2005 legislative session that would require more recorded votes. But lawmakers have varying views on how far to go.
"I strongly agree with the argument that all the votes of the Texas Legislature should be both public record and easily accessible," said state Sen. John Carona of Dallas, who proposed a constitutional amendment requiring certain record votes.
Carona tried unsuccessfully to pass a similar measure last year.
"To me, it's like motherhood and apple pie," said state Rep. Dan Branch, a Dallas Republican. "It's very difficult to say, 'Hey, I'm against recorded votes.' "
But Branch, who also has filed a recorded votes bill, cautioned against "simplistic, broad change."
Roll-call votes on simple procedural questions would slow down the Legislature's work during its 140-day biennial session and cause more votes to be used out of context in election season, Branch said.
Committee votes on bills must be recorded, Branch said. So must votes on proposed constitutional amendments because they require a two-thirds margin for passage, before appearing on a statewide ballot.
A recorded vote in the full House or Senate is conducted if just three members ask for one. Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick routinely grants a recorded vote if one legislator asks.
Individual vote records are available to the public online, though some say they aren't easy to find.
Both Branch and Craddick say they support recorded votes on final passage of non-local legislation.
Craddick, however, is concerned about costs, said his spokesman, Bob Richter. The House journal clerk estimates printing and proofreading costs for each recorded House vote is $55. For last year's regular session, that would have totaled $52,305 for the 951 recorded votes taken on a variety of questions and bills.
The state's two-year budget is about $117 billion.
Two measures are often cited by record-votes advocates as having not received a roll-call vote last year. One involved allowing use of a customer's credit score in determining insurance rates. Another concerned permitting the state to seize the homes of Medicaid nursing home patients after they die.
A number of recorded votes were taken on those sweeping bills, and the House banned credit scoring in the insurance bill with a recorded vote. But the House did not take a recorded vote afterward on its final passage of that insurance bill.
Once the bill was changed for the last time in a House-Senate conference committee, which restored credit scoring, both the House and Senate held record votes in approving it.
The nursing-home-patient provision was added into a larger bill without a recorded vote. Both chambers held recorded votes on final passage of the nursing-home-patient bill. And the House, but not the Senate, recorded its vote on the last changes to the bill made by a conference committee.
Rep. Garnet Coleman, a Houston Democrat often at odds with the Republican leadership, isn't complaining about the current voting system because, in his view, all votes are recorded. A voice vote signifies that a lawmaker voted with the majority, unless a legislator noted a "no" vote in the House journal, he said.
Coleman said he doesn't oppose requiring more individual recorded votes. But he fears it could make conservative lawmakers less likely to support a moderate bill because they would worry voters at home would hold that vote against them.
"It's used as a 'gotcha' for campaigns, for each side," he said.
Camin of the League of Women Voters acknowledged some legislators argue that requiring recorded votes would eliminate wheeling and dealing in the Legislature that can result in good public policy.
But, she said, public access to representatives' votes is essential to democracy.