Downing was the representative for Illinois’s 16th congressional district and was a Democrat. He served from 1895 to 1897.
![Photo of Rep. Finis Downing [D-IL16, 1895-1897]](/static/legislator-photos/403582-200px.jpeg)
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Dec 1895 to Jun 1896, Downing missed 50 of 88 roll call votes, which is 56.8%. This is much worse than the median of 36.8% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Jun 1896. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990 by Howard L. Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole.
- Martis’s “The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress”, via Keith Poole’s roll call votes data set, for political party affiliation for Members of Congress from 1789 through about year 2000
- Biographical Directory of the United States Congress for the photo
