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KentuckyVotes.org: Shining the light produces the heat

By Caleb O. Brown

Legislators have flipped the switch toward a more accountable and transparent state government. The Kentucky General Assembly’s leadership voted Wednesday to place future roll-call votes cast by the House and Senate on the Legislative Research Commission’s (LRC’s) Web site.

This historic policy change will save citizens time, money and energy when tracking the actions of their legislators. It also enables KentuckyVotes.org to update its voter-friendly Web site with the LRC’s latest and most accurate information.

Plus, the move just makes sense in an emerging Web-based society. Kentuckians can get sports scores in real time. Why shouldn’t voters be able to find out how their elected officials voted without having to wait more than a year until Frankfort publishes its hard-copy version?

By the time legislators voted last Wednesday, KentuckyVotes.org contained a record of every roll-call vote taken during the 2005 Legislature. In January, KentuckyVotes.org will provide citizen-activists with these 2005 vote tallies plus daily updates on proposed legislation undertaken by the 2006 General Assembly.

Soon, KentuckyVotes.org hopes to place committee votes online in the same accurate and timely way. The absence of transparency in committee hearings should generate the next level of legislative reform.

Vitally important policy proposals too often disappear in these meetings. Currently the disapproval of a single committee chair can stymie legislation potentially important to Kentucky’s future. Posting the votes of legislative committees on the LRC site and on KentuckyVotes.org could help remedy such single-minded diversions.

When voters scroll through the hundreds of votes that will be cast in 2006, they will discover that legislators have acquired habits inconsistent in an era of online accountability.

For example, our representatives are allowed to change their votes after the chamber’s clerk takes the roll call. For a variety of reasons, they can decide that a particular vote was cast in error and can file a motion to change it.

This practice may give legislators a rhetorical ace in the hole when facing constituents back home. In fact, it tends to obscure the integrity intended by the recording of a roll-call vote and ultimately serves only the politicians. The only vote that truly matters is the “yea” or “nay” lodged by each legislator and recorded by the clerk during the roll call.

LRC Director Robert Sherman wrote in a recent letter: “Once votes are taken, the outcomes are final, unless a motion to reconsider is approved."

A changed vote is a political vote. With it, a legislator simply says: “Whoops! I should have voted differently.”

Legislators miss votes for a variety of reasons and too many are in the habit of entering votes after the fact. Serious illnesses and family emergencies are certainly forgivable. However, when some decide to “take a walk” when their vote really matters, deliberately missing one should be a strike against them.

Here again, legislators often return to the chamber after the dust has settled and file a motion to enter their vote, a meaningless after-the-fact exercise that contributes nothing to the legislative process. In 2003, the most recent year in which official data are available, Kentucky House members modified their votes 466 times in 347 roll calls taken on bills from both chambers.

The fact that legislators feel comfortable offering neither a “yea” nor “nay” when the clerk takes the roll means they’re content to let important votes occur without weighing in on behalf of their constituents. But voters send lawmakers to Frankfort precisely to seek out the credible information that enables them to cast informed votes.

KentuckyVotes.org intends to rectify this behavior. This Web site contains a permanent feedback loop to keep the interests of constituents front and center in the minds of their elected representatives.

Some legislators have yet to fully embrace the fact that the roll-call vote is the only decision that matters. Voting after the roll call or changing a vote serves only to obscure a legislator’s true record and give fainthearted politicians the ability to wiggle out from under difficult votes. Thanks to KentuckyVotes.org’s push for online voting records, this practice will hopefully disappear as voters find out what is really happening in Frankfort.

Elected representatives who miss just a handful of roll calls during a legislative session should be congratulated for serving their constituents. For legislators who habitually ignore or change votes, the LRC and KentuckyVotes.org will shine a bright light that applies the heat to change Frankfort's legislative environment.

- Caleb O. Brown is director of KentuckyVotes.org, a voter information Web site. Contact him at brown@bipps.org or at (270)-782-2140.

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