July 6, 2008
Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: Questions
A visitor to this site asked me:
Q:
How can I find out what a particular representative voted upon and then went back to change his/her vote? I understand that this is done very often so that the hometown folks think that he/she voted one way, but that they go back and change the actual vote recorded later.
Was it really true that Members of Congress can change their votes?
As it turns out, actual votes cannot be changed after the fact, though that may not be the whole story. To find this out, I asked my expert colleagues. The first answer I got came from a very knowledgeable Congressional staffer who wrote:
A1:
There are times when members miss a vote, and come to the floor and say, had I been here, I would have voted yay/ney and that is inserted into the Congressional Record, but that commentary is not inserted into the Clerk’s official tally nor is it considered to be a “vote.” There are also times when a Rep votes one way and goes to the floor and also says, “oops, I meant to vote the other way” but again, that is just in the Congressional Record, and not reflected in the official vote record/tally. [Neither the official House website nor GovTrack would take into account these statements.]
Former staffer Chris Kinnan clarified:
A2:
They can change votes during the 15 minute voting period (and some do nearly every vote, they watch to see howtheir state colleagues are voting or they get arm-twisted) but once the vote is closed that’s the official record and its not changed.
And lastly former staffer Daniel Bennett noted that interpreting votes can sometimes be impossible:
Looking at the raw roll call votes with no context means almost nothing.
Bills can and often do include “killer” sections that mean that a representative must vote for the whole bill or risk appearing to be against how the bill is described. The Republicans were able to set up many votes in Congress to get the Democrats to appear to be voting against “supporting” the troops by including pieces that were disdainful to the Democrats and which might even not make it to the final vote. Oh yes, legislation is often passed in slightly different forms in the Senate and the House, and that sets up the possibility of having a vote on a House version that will be different from the version that makes it through the conference committee. And I haven’t even gotten to the naming of bills or early committee votes.
So the short answer is no, but the long answer is it’s hard to ever know what a vote is about in the first place!
10 comments so far...
What about when a congressperson steps to the podium, turns around BEFORE speaking and asks the Chair for permission to “revise and extend my remarks”?
I have never been watching when said request was denied. Isn’t THAT their vehicle to fool their constituents into thinking they voted one way and not the other?
That practice is quite questionable in its own right — it has been used in the past to (accidentally) insert remarks by a Member who died a few days previously — but it’s not used to change the tally of votes. No doubt it could be and probably has been used to fool people, but probably not on votes since it is easy to go to the tally, which doesn’t change.
If I am not mistaken, official testimony is differentiated from submitted written testimony in the committee report on a bill by type font. I think one is in italics. So it is possible to distinguish between testimony that is actually spoken at the time of consideration of legislation and testimony that is inserted at a later time.
There is a really famous case of inserted testimony when the Supreme Court was considering a case about a Gitmo detainee. Senators Kyle and Graham issued an amicus brief to the court and that brief was based on a claim of leglislative history. To make their legislative history claim, the two inserted testimony into the Congressional record after the fact in the form of a conversation (to make it look like they were having an actual back-and-forth conversation on the Senate floor and even included an interruption). The Dept of Justice even used this fake record in their brief to the court. The court noticed.
In the Congressional Record, as I recall, inserted text is marked by a bullet. But, you can only see the bullet in the PDF — so not when browsing it on THOMAS or GovTrack. (But, I’m not entirely sure, actually. It would be worth double-checking that.)
More anecdotes here: http://www.reason.com/news/show/119028.html
Oh and I should say that this was covered in the Open House Project’s report:
http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/the-open-house-project-report/10-the-congressional-record/
(disclosure- I was a co-author of other sections of the report.)
Notice the attempt by former staffer Daniel Bennett above to paint the Republicans as tricksters when it comes to legislation. Naturally, Democrats are above such childish tactics. Is it any wonder why Congress has it’s lowest approval ratings in history?
It’s quite hilarious that you guys should mention the tricky legislation. I was a Page, and worked in the U.S. House of Representatives every day for about 6 months. I witnessed this from BOTH sides quite frequently.
It is possibly the only tool that republicans have, and is by no means ‘childish.’ For example, when they did not want to vote on a certain FISA bill, (because the democrats would push it through, only to have it vetoed, just wasting congressional time) they proposed a tricky amendment: Vote one way, and you HAD to agree with the republicans and make the bill bipartisan, vote the other way, and you were directly voting in support of terrorists. The democrats just removed the bill from debate and scrapped it.
That isn’t childish. It’s an interesting application of logic.
John’s point drives right into the heart of why our two-part bipartisan politics do our governmental process a disservice.
So what if a passed bill wastes time and goes to Veto. it is what the process was designed for.
In my personal opinion, republican or democrat, if a bill is important enough to a majority of the members of congress, they should keep shipping it to the White House.
If a bill is for naming a Post Office after Stalin, then I could understand not using parliamentary tactics to stop it. There is no need to do anything time-sensitive to ensure its demise.
However, national security legislation is very time sensitive. Playing games with our lives is not appropiate.
This govt needed a FISA law, immediately. It was reckless to go through the motions of passing a bill that everyone knew would be vetoed.
My question is simple. When member of congress votes and pass a bill,( as in the Cap and Trade Bill this past Friday ) but before the Senate gets it. Can a Congressmen change his vote if he feels he was forced or pressured into voting a certain way? And if so, can you provide a link for validity!
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