Last week, I wrote a post dissing Jim Barnett's idea that the Vermont Legislature needs electronic voting boards so people can more easily see how legislators vote. A day later, I had the occasion to guide someone through the process of looking votes up, and it gave me pause to reconsider.
Not the electronic scoreboards. I still think that'd be mighty gaudy in our quaint Statehouse. But is there a better way of archiving votes on particular bills so that the ordinary person could navigate the minefield?
Want to know how a particular legislator voted on everything? You can call his or her votes up on the Leggie Web site, but you've got to have a pretty good understanding of how things work to understand what the vote is.
Want to know how your senators voted last week on the campaign finance bill? You can look it up in that day's journal. Here's what you would find:
Thereupon, the bill was read the second time by title only pursuant to
Rule 43, the recommendation of amendment was agreed to and third reading of
the bill was ordered on a roll call, Yeas 28, Nays 0.
Senator Sears having demanded the yeas and nays, they were taken
and are as follows:
Roll Call
Those Senators who voted in the affirmative
were: Ayer, Bartlett, Campbell, Carris, Collins, Condos, *Coppenrath, Cummings,
Doyle, Giard, Hartwell, Illuzzi, Kitchel, Kittell, Lyons, MacDonald, Maynard,
Mazza, McCormack, Miller, Mullin, Nitka, Racine, Sears, Shumlin, Snelling,
Starr, White.
Those Senators who voted in the negative were: None.
Those
Senators absent and not voting were: Flanagan, Scott.
Not up to speed on your jargon? Well, the simplest way to check on roll call vote is to look it up by bill on the Leggie web site. You'll get list of all the members and how they voted. Maybe that's the best we can do.
Anybody have any better ideas for simplifying things?
- Terri Hallenbeck
